
<5fverr<*rt ^roM/tt 




Class _JiLJL2£. 
Book, ,"% 5 7 B ? 
CopyrightN? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



THE BIRDS OF GOD 



The colored plates in this volume are used by special 
permission of the National Association of Audubon Socie- 
ties, IQ74 Broadway, New York City, 




BLUE JAY 
Order— Passeres Family— Corvid^ 

Genus— Cyanocitta Species— Crista ta 



THE BIRDS OF GOD 

PARALLELS OF MAN IN THE 
FEATHERED CREATION 

A Portfolio of Anecdotes 

BY 

THERON BROWN 

Author of "Nameless Women of the Bible" "Life Songs" 

" Story of the Hymns and Tunes" " Under 

the Mulberry Trees" Etc. 



" A morning nest of birds for Thee 
To whom all birds belong." 

Josephine Preston Peabody 



BOSTON 

AMERICAN HUMANE EDUCATION SOCIETY 

1912 






v v 



V 



COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE 
AMERICAN HUMANE EDUCATION SOCIETY 



THB«PLIMFTOH»PRBSS 
[ W • D • o] 

HORWOOD-MASS'U'S'A 



©CLA320027 



CONTENTS 



introduction 

Our Winged Fellow Creatures 


I 


Bird Myths, etc. 


4 


The Wild Duck's Device . 


36 


The Phoenix .... 


5 


Piety of a Swan .... 


36 


The Halcyon .... 


5 


A Pigeon's Fatal Grief . 


37 


The Harpy 


6 


A Seabird's Deathbed . 


38 


The Roc 


6 


A Baby's Song-angel 


39 


Bird Veneration (ancient) . 


8 


The Little Boy and the 


Not Mine 


IS 


Mocking-bird .... 


40 


Wounding Christ 


17 


Jerry McAuley's Playmates 


4i 


Bird Affection .... 


18 


Could those Nest-makers 




The Stepmother Linnet . 


18 


Read? 


42 


A Bantam's Broken Heart . 


19 


Winged Hero-worshipers 


43 


The Crippled Stork . 


20 


Culture of Bird Affection . 


45 


A Canary's Comfort Song . 


21 


A Little Boy's Gallant 




A Sparrow's Loving Kindness 


22 


Impulse 


45 


A Swallow Nurse 


23 


Black Pensioners 


47 


In Prison ye Visited me 


24 


Artificial Nests .... 


48 


Sick of the Vain World 


25 


An Army Shielding a Swallow 


49 


A Bird-mother's Patience . 


26 


The Value of a Sparrow 


50 


A Bird-mother's Discipline 


28 


A Mixed Rescue 


52 


Singing for a Wife . 


29 


The Bird between two Gun- 




Matrimonial Honor 


30 


fires 


54 


A Mother's Sacrifice 


31 


A Bird that changed a Rail- 




Love's Burnt-offering . 


32 


way Route ...» 


55 


A Hen's Intelligent Love . 


33 


Champions of the Goose 


56 


A Hen's Heroism 


33 


Killed by Scolding . 


57 


A Canary that Reasoned . 


34 


Worth a Benediction 


59 


Love's Ingenuity 


35 






Bird Emblems and Omens 




Ancient Types of Character 


59 


Bird Emblem of "Good 




Reinhabited 


60 


Night" 


71 


A Wren Mascot . 




61 


Bird Emblem of Happiness 


74 


" Proud as a Peacock " 




62 


Bird Emblems of Faith and 




A Symbol of Peace . 




64 


Contentment .... 


74 


Garfield's Visitors . 




65 


Bird Emblems of Brother- 




The Tsar's Pigeons . 




66 


hood and Consecration . 


76 


Prophetic Birds . 




67 


Bird Emblem of Benediction 


77 


Bird Emblems of Truth 




Bird Emblems of Spiritual 




and Counsel .... 


68 


Freedom ..... 


77 


Bird Emblem of Altruism . 


69 


Emblems of Free Communion 


78 


Bird Emblem of Sympathy 


70 


Bird Emblems of Patriotism 


79 


Bird Emblems of Chivalry . 


70 


Bird Emblem of Liberty 


80 


Bird Emblem of Honest 


y • 


72 


"Old Abe" 


82 



VI 



CONTEXTS 



Miscellaneous 



An Injured Bird-mother 

The Orioles and the Patriarch 

A Bird's Strange War- song. 

A Spoilt Magpie 

A Peace-making Goose . 

A Little Truce-bird . 

Charitable Robins . 

Fright Turned a Bird Gray 

A Missionary Bird . 

A Pigeon's Taste in Music . 

A Sparrow's "Good Morning" 97 

Gallant Bravery of Wild 

Geese 98 

Highways and Beacons of 

Birds 98 



Bird Trips by Express . . 100 
Bird Punishment of Bur- 
glary and Trespass . 101 
The Provident Woodpecker 103 
The Belfry Pigeon . . . 103 
Asleep on the Telegraph 

Wire . . . . . 104 

Birds in a Gong .... 105 
Birds that Calm the Sea . ; 106 

Birds and Practical Jokes . 107 

Little Feathered Warriors . 108 

Polite Birds (Webfoots) . no 

A Bird Charity-boarder . 112 

A Miracle on Wings. . . 114 



Our Winged Friends 



The Island Birds 

Another Bird-world 

The Bird and the Prisoner 
of Chillon 

Canary made a Child a 
Musician 

The Children's Stork Friend 

Birds' Friendly Hint 

Church Robins .... 

A Nest in a Bible 

Great Gratitude in a Little 
Breast 

How the Sea-gull Paid him 

Cruelty Avenged 

Dove-notes and the Pirate 

Birds Defeated the Mo- 
nopolists 

A Hen Providence . 

The Bamboo Bird 



117 The Doves of St. Mark . 133 

1 1 3 St. Francis and the Birds . 134 

A Little King's Playmates . 136 

119 A Traveled Pigeon . . . 137 

A Winged "Apostle of God" 138 

121 A Wild Dove Cured her 140 

122 Birds Want Human Com- 

123 pany 144 

124 Columbus and the Sea-birds 145 

125 Bird Mischief Exaggerated 145 
What the Crows did . 146 

127 A Hen that Made Money . 149 

128 Mrs. Nansen's Pigeon . . 149 

129 Bird Friends of the Russians 150 

129 Her Snowbird Came Back . 151 
Our Prettiest Neighbor . 152 

130 The Chinese Loo-ow . . 153 
151 Mrs. Ben Wan and her Par- 

131 rot 154 



Our Winged Helpers 



Christopher the Raven . . 156 
Jack, the Raven of Labra- 
dor 158 

Saved by the Sound of Wings 161 

Genghis Khan and the Birds 164 

Acquitted by a Chicken . 165 

Bessie's Pigeons .... 166 

The Wren of Boyne Water . 167 
Newman Highborn and the 

Swallow 168 



Billy the Cockatoo . . . 171 
Bird Monitors and a Wise 

Gipsy 172 

A Canary's Death-song . 173 
A War-hawk's Providential 

Errand 174 

Another Sea-messenger . . 175 

A Lost Bird's Mission . . 177 

A Doctor's Bird-Helper . 178 

The Chirp of a River-bird . 179 



CONTENTS 



Vll 



of 



A Famous Gander . 
The Child and the La 

Nest 

A Parrot and the Luck 
Tardeau .... 
The Goose and the Burning 

Barn 
Elsa's Bullfinch . 
The Lost Daughter and her 

Canary 
Stanley and the Guinea-fowl 
Birds Helped Alexander 
Polly's Scream . 
Jimmy Myers and the Pigeon 
The Pigeons of Pekin 
What an Albatross did 
A Flock that Stopped a Ship 
A Lame Goose and a Mort- 
gage . . . . . 
Acres of Bird-meat . 
Merlin and the Hen 
A Raven like Elijah's 
An Owl Saved a Train 
A Duck Showed the Way 
A Strange Bird Prevented a 

Suicide . 
Dead Birds Revealed a Mur- 
der ... 



179 
181 

183 

184 
18S 



192 
193 
193 
194 
194 
197 
199 

200 
202 
203 
204 
20s 
206 

207 

208 



An Admonitory Cock-crow 209 
Innocent Negro and the 

Ostrich 211 

Battle of the Song-birds and 

the Locusts .... 213 
How Gulls became Insect- 
eaters 215 

A Gallant Game-cock . . 216 
The Battle-bird of the Sara- 
toga 217 

Another Rooster Story . . 218 

Timely Gift of a Dead Raven 220 

The Raven and the Ring . 221 
A Raven and a Dangerous 

Dinner 223 

A Blind Woman's Gander . 223 
A Parrot's Word for it .224 
Polly and the Tramp . . 225 
The Guako Hawk . . . 227 
Sam Houston's Bird of Des- 
tiny 229 

The Owl of King's Chapel . 230 

Hens that Started a College 231 

A Bird Railroad Surveyor 233 

How Birds Make Land . 234 



Our Winged Preachers 



Sermon 


I. Faith in Provi- 




XII 


A Sacred Building 






dence .... 


235 




Lot .... 


251 


II 


"Descending like a 




XIII 


God's Pensioner . 


252 




Dove" 


236 


XIV 


Passing, but Home- 




III 


"How Amiable are 






bound 


255 




thy Tabernacles" 


238 


XV 


Where are you Go- 




IV 


A Text for an 






ing? .... 


256 




Atheist . 


239 


XVI 


God Touched his 




V 


The Only God 


241 




Hand . . . 


258 


VI 


The Wiser Friend 


242 


XVII 


Listen before you 




VII 


Hopeful and Help- 






Leap .... 


259 




ful Piety . . 


243 


XVIII 


"What for?" . . 


261 


VIII 


Flavel and the 




XIX 


The Song in the 






Nightingales . 


24S 




Night . . . 


262 


IX 


An Annual Memo- 




XX 


A Hard Heart 






rial Sermon . 


247 




Softened . 


263 


X 


A Sluggard's Lesson 248 


XXI 


No Taste for Heaven 


264 


XI 


Christianizing a 




XXII 


The Warning 






Mining Camp . 


249 




Weathercock 


265 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



Our Winged Songsters 



Birds and the Origin of 
Music 

Singing Souls 

A Land of No Death i: 
Land of Song . 

No Trees, No Song-birds 

Poet and Bird . 

A Sacramental Robin . 

The Wood Thrush 

The Bobolink . . . 

A Tabernacle Bird . 

A Singer's Gift . 

Serenades of Solitude 

Easter Praise in a Tree 

She Excused her Canary 

An Orchestra of Escaped 
Vocalists 



The Music of Ages . 
267 Jenny Lind's Rival . 
270 Sambo on the Mocking- 
bird 

270 Indians and Bird-song . 

272 The Shadow of a Bird . 

273 Waiting for the Song 

273 A Warrior's Nunc Dimitti 

274 Voices of August 

275 A Winter Singer 
277 The Poets' Themes . 
277 An Old Bard's Legacy . 
279 Morning Joy 

282 A Sabbath-breaking (?) 

282 Starling .... 
The Lays of Paradise 

283 God's Own Choristers . 



285 

285 

286 
286 
287 
288 
289 
289 
290 
291 
292 
293 

294 
296 
297 



Our Winged Martyrs 



Poor Little Queen of Bird- 
land 

A Boy's Target .... 

The Herods of Bird-slaugh- 
ter 

Finley's Ghastly Story . 



299 
300 



302 
305 



What it Costs to Punish 

these Murders . . . 307 

The Lost Ectopistes Migra- 

torius 312 

A Converted Bird-killer . 314 

Responsibility and Remedy 315 



The Birds of God 



INTRODUCTION 

"He had a thought, and it set Him smiling, 
Of the shape of a bird, and its glancing head, 
Its dainty air, and its grace beguiling — 
'I will make feathers/ the Lord God said. 

He made the robin, He made the swallow, 
His deft hand molding the shape to His mood, 
The thrush and lark, and the finch to follow, 
And laughed to see that His work was good." 

Katharine Tynan 

TWO surviving mementos of the lost 
Eden are the flowers of the sun and the 
birds of God. Both retain the innocence of 
their primitive garden days, and both perpet- 
uate its exquisite charm — one in the pure 
beauty of still life, and the other in their 
endless variety and grace of motion and 
their wealth of suggestion to the world of 
mankind. 

When God commanded, "Let fowl fly above 
the earth in the firmament of heaven," He 
broadened animal life with the blessing of 
freedom in the sky and a charter for all time 
to enjoy the wider glory of His first decree. 



2 INTRODUCTION 

"Let there be Light" meant wings to the 
thought of Beecher when he wondered if the 
Creator did not omit something He intended 
to put in when He began — and finally left man 
without wings. But after thousands of years 
it is easier to say that man does not need 
wings than to believe God meant man to soar 
over the land instead of settling on it. He 
left something to his proudest creature's imag- 
ination. The frailer and more ethereal things 
that fly have no imagination, but they are 
object lessons for its use. Duller, indeed, the 
human world would be if the very atmosphere 
did not swarm with feathered poetry, and if 
there were no tribe of animal life that can do 
one thing that man cannot do. Far beyond 
their gift of flight the birds are an inspira- 
tion to us, and we can find and enjoy the 
reason of their creation without breaking the 
Tenth Commandment. 

"The Birds of God" is not so much a vol- 
ume of problems as of plain examples. A book 
of little more than two hundred anecdotes and 
stories cannot be a cyclopedia or a synopsis of 
comparative anatomy, but it can be an index 
of comparative life. 

The following pages may help some to under- 
stand and appreciate better the importance of 
bird-life, the message our plumed companions 
bring us, and their presence in the realm 



INTROD UCTION 3 

of nature as a beautiful divine ordinance. 
In the New Testament, after the teachings of 
the Four Gospels come the Acts. After the 
foregoing voucher for our group of characters 
come the acts and incidents of their lives 
and some of the parts they have played, and 
are still playing, on this planet. Are they all 
facts? Where any warrant for the truth of 
an item or narrative could be obtained it has 
been given, but this cannot cover all. The 
legendary ones are so marked, and allowance 
is made for the traditional. Some of the un- 
traced may be mere parallels of instruction. 
A few may be ethnic dreams, but, like the 
dreams of Pharaoh's butler and baker, they are 
all significant parallels of human life and mirrors 
of the fortunes and fates of men. Such stories 
are worth a chapter by themselves — as Dr. 
Arnold separated the fabulous from the authen- 
tic in his history of Rome. No life is long 
enough to verify every story; and, after all, in 
many cases the only candle to truth is tradition. 
We begin with a few notices of bird myths 
and mythic birds, showing the human instinct 
that finds texts of wisdom in the feathered 
kingdom, and even assumes peculiar divine 
ownership of all winged creatures. 1 

1 In the following pages no effort is made to differ- 
entiate species in the case of birds of the same popular 
name; e.g., the "sparrow," which in the Bible and the 



4 INTRODUCTION 

This will introduce the first section of 
our Book of Anecdotes — Our Winged Fellow 
Creatures. 

folk-lore of nations may mean any small bird, and 
"dove" — a family so numerous that, aside from the 
fact that "dove" is the Anglo-Saxon and "pigeon" the 
Norman name, no distinct identity is possible without 
an adjective. No one cares to what tribe the "dove" 
belonged that helped Noah when he wanted to find his 
latitude and longitude, or the "dove" of Jeremiah that 
"maketh her nest in the side of the hole's mouth," or 
Ezekiel's "doves of the valley," or the "pigeons" that 
served the ancient Egyptians and Julius Caesar, and that 
Mary Queen of Scots longed for in prison. We only 
need to remember what a factor this favorite bird has 
been in the history of the world. 



OUR WINGED FELLOW 
CREATURES 

THE PHOENIX 

PROBABLY in no country but Egypt 
could such a fabulous fowl have been 
born or created, though it spent most of its life 
(the narrators say) "in the wilderness." The 
bird had an eagle's shape and a dragon's head. 
After living five thousand years it returned to 
Egypt, built a nest, kindled a fire in it, fanned 
the fire with its wings, and burned itself to 
ashes — and out of the ashes rose again to 
recommence its life with new plumage. 

The creature was an embodied symbol of 
resurrection. Even some of the early Chris- 
tians believed in the bird, and used it as one 
of the evidences of this doctrine. 

THE HALCYON 

The halcyon is perpetuated in a real bird's 
poetic name, but the myth of the first 
halcyons makes this creature a miracle of 
metamorphosed human affection. Halcyon 
(Alcyone), the daughter of Eolus and wife of 



6 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Ceyx, became insane with grief over the death 
of her husband, and drowned herself. Jupiter 
in compassion reunited her and her husband in 
winged form as a kingfisher with its mate. 

The fable shows how early understood was 
the truth that Heaven recognizes and rewards 
the mutual fidelity of matrimonial love. 

THE HARPY 

This name is given to the great Mexican 
eagle, but the mythical harpies (a word appar- 
ently created by Homer, in his Odyssey, from 
the Greek harpazo) were divine avengers sent 
to punish paternal cruelty. There were three of 
them, Aello, Okypta, and Celano, and they had 
human faces and vultures' bodies and talons. 
Phineus, king of Thrace, had put out the eyes 
of his two young sons, and the gods, after blind- 
ing him, sent the harpies to torment him, which 
they did by flying at him and snatching his 
food away every time he tried to eat. 

The snatching characteristic of the harpy, 
conferred by its parent verb, is all that is left 
in the modern thought of these frightful mes- 
sengers of justice. 

THE ROC 

Identical, probably, with the Simoorgh 
of Persian mythology. The original of this 
creature seems to have been some one, or 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 7 

several, of the giant birds that were ancient 
natives of East African islands or wildernesses, 
such as the dinornis, the epyornis, the har- 
pagornis, or the moa — all now extinct. Marco 
Polo relates that the Khan of Tartary sent 
explorers to Madagascar to capture a roc. 
All they found to carry home was a single 
feather six feet and a half long with a quill 
six inches in circumference. 

Modern explorers have gone to the same 
island and gathered relics of these elephantine 
fowls, and brought away bones which could 
easily belong to wearers of six or seven foot 
feathers, and also in one instance a broken 
egg which, when the shell pieces were matched 
together, was six times as large as an ostrich's 
egg, and whose yolk would have filled a nine- 
quart bucket. The sight of such a bird to 
the primitive Arab, or the negro hunter in 
the forest, would be sufficiently exciting, and 
naturally their terror and imagination exag- 
gerated the creature's size. 

The legend of the roc is a relic of the era of 
monsters produced by the Maker as samples 
of wild physical might. In all that mere limb 
power and brute weight could do or prove, 
they justified their purpose and had their 
day. As the eons rolled away bulk was sup- 
planted by beauty, and enormity by grace 
and happy proportion. The kings of muscle 



8 THE B IRDS OF GOD 

resigned their sovereignty to the airier races 
of speed and song. 

Turning from mythic birds to myths about 
birds, we cannot forget how significant it is 
that all nations have betrayed some reverent 
notion of sanctity in the winged races; some 
insistent idea that among the honors of their 
customary life, and in their religious symbol- 
ism, the birds are to be remembered and 
reckoned with — and the species fixed upon 
as especially sacred were usually determined 
according to the latitude, legends, and local 
sentiment of the people. Anciently the fancy 
that birds talked with men appears to have 
been an article of faith. The Greeks claimed 
that Pallas Athene gave the knowledge of 
bird-language to blind Tiresias, and that 
Thales and Melampus acquired the same 
accomplishment. Pliny in his natural history 
gives a recipe for obtaining this knowledge, 
and instances a King Dag who was past mas- 
ter of it and kept "sparrows" that told him 
news from every country. Tradition ascribes 
to King Solomon the ability to converse with 
the fowls of the air, and the same gift is cred- 
ited to Gerbert of Seville and Pope Benedict 
IX. Indeed, the possibility of this singular 
branch of learning was taken so seriously that 
it was made a special study, and a learned 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 9 

German professed to have acquired the 
unknown tongue or tongues, and compiled 
a vocabulary. Afterwards two enterprising 
Frenchmen, Dupont de Nemours and Pier- 
quin de Gembeaux, actually took up his plan, 
and published works on bird-language and its 
idioms. 

Professor Garner has not yet reached that 
point in his inquiries among apes and mon- 
keys. 

It is safe to say at least that birds are in 
nearer communication with us and under- 
stand us better than we realize. A few curi- 
ous writers have argued that man originally 
possessed a sixth sense which comprehended 
the secret languages of nature and gave him 
the key to universal intercourse. We could 
mourn the loss of this privilege more sorely if 
we knew it to be a fact. If any trace of this 
supposed faculty lingers with articulate-speak- 
ing mortals, it may be the singular gift of bird- 
charming possessed by certain men and women 
and even children. An instance reported some 
years ago from a town near Harrisburg, Pa., 
was a girl five years old whose attractive power 
was first noticed when she was playing in the 
garden where a flock of snowbirds had alighted. 
She talked to them, and they immediately 
flew to her. She took them in her hands and 
stroked them, but, so far from showing fear, 



10 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

they twittered in their bird-language, as if 
professing their confidence and friendship. 
From that time whenever a door or window was 
open, birds that had once made the acquaint- 
ance of the little charmer flew into the house 
to find her, and by the indulgence of her 
parents she came to own quite an aviary, 
and would play with her winged companions 
hours at a time. Even the tiny humming- 
bird would come to her call and perch on her 
finger. 

Mr. Charles Kellogg, a California natural- 
ist, known as "the bird-singer," has a remark- 
able gift which has more than once brought him 
solicitations to appear as a novelty at the vari- 
ety theaters. By a freak of nature the for- 
mation of his throat and nasal organs enables 
him to imitate the voices of any bird, and, 
indeed, of most four-footed creatures. Soon 
after his arrival in Boston, on his first visit 
to the East, he left his hotel for a walk, and 
in passing across the Common he was attracted 
by the number of pigeons and sparrows. He 
stood on the Mall, a short distance from the 
new bandstand, and began singing. In five 
minutes it seemed as if the birds were rushing 
from everywhere to hear the bird singing from 
a human throat and nostrils. 

Several hundred persons watched the won- 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES II 

derful sight. Sparrows and pigeons perched 
on his shoulders, and the squirrels went up the 
legs of his trousers. Mr. Kellogg spoke of 
this as a daily incident of his life in the moun- 
tains of California, and simply added in ex- 
planation, "I love the birds, the animals, and 
the insects, and they love me." 

An interesting advance beyond purely myth- 
ical ornithology was the old faith that ascribed 
supernatural agency or influence to birds of 
known names. Our common title of "mascot" 
for pet animals supposed to be vouchers for 
good luck is only a half-sportive trace of this 
ancient veneration. In the case of birds, 
common examples were the stork in Greece 
and Arabia, the ibis in Egypt, the eagle, raven, 
and swan in Scandinavia, the swallow and robin 
in Germany, the goose among the Brahmins 
of India and the primitive Britons, and the 
wren in France and Scotland. All these, at 
one time and another, were believed to be 
favored of Heaven with some occult power 
or attribute that made them "auspices" 1 or 
revelators of human fortune and hostages of 
God. 

The early Germans considered the robin a 

hallowed bird which even beasts as well as 

men dared not kill, and to eat one, or rob its 

nest, was sacrilege — and the nests of the swal- 

1 Bird-spies (Lat. avis and sptcio). 



12 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

lows were thought to protect a house from fire. 
The wren in certain districts of France enjoyed 
the same reputation and pious immunity. 
To injure one was believed to bring down 
lightning on the offender's house — natives 
of a neighboring country held the bird to be 
divinely cared for, and the common name 
for the wren in Normandy was VOiseau de 
DieUy "the bird of God." The legend was 
current there (perhaps still is, among the peas- 
antry) that this bird gave all its feathers to 
shield the little Christ-child from the cold 
as he lay in the manger. Robert Chambers 
says the same reverence guarded the wren in 
Scotland and warned human mischief away 
from its nest with a rhymed curse: 

Malisons, malisons mair than ten 

That harry the lodge of Heaven's hen! " 

In the rude theology of the Northmen the 
eagle was the winged Intelligence that sat 
upon the Life-Tree Yggdrasil, and two swans 
were keepers of the holy spring at the root of 
the Tree; while two ravens were the attend- 
ants and errand birds of Odin. In Egypt 
the ibis was regarded with a feeling next to 
worship. Its body at death was elaborately 
embalmed, hundreds of the sacred birds' 
mortuary remains being discovered at a late 
date near the pyramids of Aboukir. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 13 

The old belief in bird augury 1 was sometimes 
taken advantage of by designing men. No one 
of "the faithful" would deny that the dove 
which at times "whispered" in Mohammed's 
ear was a heavenly messenger sent from the 
skies with divine revelations, and no one but 
an "infidel" would insinuate that the Prophet 
put grains of wheat in his ear. Maximus 
Tyreus tells the story of Psapho of Lybia, 
who was possessed with an insane ambition 
to be apotheosized, and determined to make 
his election sure before he died. He secretly 
trained some parrots to repeat "Psapho is a 
great god," and finally turned them loose in 
the woods. Simple people heard their cry, and 
thought it miraculous, and (so says the story) 
actually paid the profane fellow divine honors. 

The homage that an impious polytheist, 
by infinite care and pains, taught the fowls 
of the air to pay to himself, is paid by them 
to the Supreme Being without rehearsals or 
drills. They need no schooling in the art of 
praising their Maker. 

A remarkable Central American bird, still 
extant (?) has been so much exploited in prior 
times in Spanish romance, and so handled by 

1 Augur, " bird-man," from avis and the ancient Celtic 
word gur, a man; or "bird-guide," from avis and the 
Sanskrit gar> to show or point out. 



14 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

later poets, that it wears a halo of miracle. 
Mexican mythology asserts that the Que- 
letzu was the first bird that sang on earth. 
The Queletzu, a species of the beautiful tribe 
of trogons, is noted in prose narratives chiefly 
for its marvelous plumage, which caused its 
adoption by the pagan emperors and its dis- 
tinction as the royal bird of the realm. 
Nothing is said of its voice in the pages of 
sober description, though the enraptured poets 
have endowed it with all the tuneful perfec- 
tions. In the London Aihenceum Eric Mackay 
tells us that 

"The first Queletzu, 
When it sprang to the blue, 

Had the heart of a rose and the wings of a dove, 
And the song that it sang to the angels above 
Was the music of love." 

More than a rival to the bird of paradise, 
the Queletzu is characterized as peerless in 
the brilliancy of its dress, and watchers paid 
by the government took note of every molt- 
ing of its colored feathers, or under solemn 
restrictions plucked the choicest from the 
living bird to adorn the helmets and uniforms 
of the court and the official nobility. It was 
not the habit of those heathen people — as 
it later became among " enlightened" nations 
— to kill these winged wonders first, and then 
make market of their beautiful plumes. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 15 

The rank of birds in creation, as men once 
innocently imagined them with a glamour of 
sanctity about them, is real, if less romantic 
now (like many a childlike belief), after the 
glamour is gone. Shorn of the embellish- 
ments of fable, the fact remains that our winged 
fellow creatures are a gift of divine benevo- 
lence to the world. Co-heirs to this planet, 
they have a preferred right, for they came 
sooner than we. 

NOT MINE 

There was devout intelligence in the idea 
of the laboring man, the Nile captain, and the 
celebrated naturalist, whose words are copied 
in these three anecdotes. 

Miss La Fleisch, the educated daughter of 
an Omaha chief, relates when and how she 
first heard the name of God. In her child- 
hood while at play one day, she picked up a 
young bird that had apparently tumbled from 
a nest. Delighted, she ran about with it in 
her hand, when a workman in the field asked 
her what it was. 

"It's mine," she said, showing her prize. 

"No, it's not yours," said the man. "You 
have no right to it." 

"Why, I found it. Whose is it, then?" 

"It's God's bird," he told her, "go and give 
it back to Him." 



16 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

"Where is God?" queried the wondering 
little girl. 

"He is here. Lay the little thing down in 
the grass, near the nest, and say, 'God, here's 
your bird.' He'll hear you." 

The little girl obeyed the kind laborer's 
direction, and the incident left with her a 
tender impression that lasted through a life- 
time. 

Mr. George T. Angell reported the follow- 
ing interview overheard between an English 
traveler and the captain of a boat on the 
Nile. The boat carried a cargo of grain, 
and from every village on the shore came birds 
in flocks and fed on the grain which was loaded 
in open bins. The sight troubled the English- 
man, and he spoke to the captain. 

"Who owns this grain?" 

"I own it," said the captain. 

" But why do you let the birds eat the grain ? " 

"Who made the birds?" retorted the captain. 

"God," said the Englishman. 

"And is not grain the food that God in- 
tended birds should eat?" 

"Yes, of course," said the Englishman. 

"Well, then," concluded the Egyptian, 
"let them eat and be satisfied. God in His 
goodness has provided enough for all His 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 17 

John Muir, the mountain climber and scien- 
tist, lives in one of the most beautiful sec- 
tions of the Contra Costa Valley in California. 
A writer in Ainslee's Magazine, who had been 
sojourning there, sat with him one day under 
the soft September sky, admiring a scene of 
plenty and peace, with its charms of tree and 
turf and stream. A solitary blue crane on the 
brook bank looked without fear on the human 
faces, and a flock of quails piped in the under- 
brush. Suddenly a shrike appeared, flying low 
over the vineyards. The visitor turned to his 
calm host with a questioning word. 

"So you do not kill even the butcher- 
birds ?" 

"No, why should I?" answered Muir. 
"They are not my birds." 

WOUNDING CHRIST 

The editor of The Christian Endeavor World 
writes of the late Robert Louis Steven- 
son in Samoa. Every Sunday Stevenson 
conducted family prayers. The Bible was 
always read by one of the Samoan servants. 
Then he would read some little sermon he had 
written, and close with the reading of a prayer. 
During the week before a certain Sunday two 
of the servants had been cruel to a bird, and 
he felt that he ought to rebuke them when the 
time for Sabbath services came. He took 



18 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

his text from the sixth chapter of Hebrews: 
"They crucify the Son of God afresh, and 
put Him to an open shame." The thought 
was one very dear to the Samoans, who talk 
much about Christ as the Author of Creation 
— a favorite thought, by the way, to the nov- 
elist himself, who loved its beauty of expres- 
sion in the first chapter of John. And so he 
preached to the Samoans that in torturing 
the poor little bird they were torturing the 
Christ who made it. 

A trait of human kinship common to the 
whole living world, and more interesting 
than any other, is the sentiment of affection. 
The examples which follow illustrate animal 
affection, both as mutually testified between 
individuals of the same class, and in many re- 
markable instances towards mankind. In our 
winged fellow creatures this sentiment seems 
more poetically suggestive. An ideal thing, 
even if sometimes evasive, is the intimacy 
between earth and the aerial world when bird 
and man emotion resemble and reciprocate 
each other. 

THE STEPMOTHER LINNET 

The author of " Bird-Lore," who is the owner 
of an aviary in Southern California, believes 
that birds "can teach us virtue, generosity, 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 19 

gratitude — all these things that go to make 
living worth while." After mentioning their 
faithfulness to their mates, he illustrates their 
generosity by an instance which he witnessed. 
Some cruel boys had stolen four half-grown 
young linnets from their nest, and left them 
on the sidewalk to die. . . . Puzzled to 
know what to do with them, the naturalist 
finally carried them into the aviary to see 
what would happen. A canary flew down, 
and then another. The little orphans peeped 
and opened their bills. The canaries were 
evidently sympathetic, but seemed uncertain 
what to do. Then down came a female lin- 
net, and took in the situation. She flew to 
the food tray, ate heartily, and then back 
to those babies she had never seen before, 
and fed them to their fill. The four fledglings 
were adopted by the pretty stepmother, and 
raised to mature and happy birdhood. 

A BANTAM'S BROKEN HEART 

This simple stickful in a New England 
daily probably excited passing interest, and 
was soon forgotten. But it reminds us — like 
many another similar instance — that the 
birds we know have attachments as deep as 
our own, and can taste something not very 
different from human sorrow, as well as joy. 

Mr. Harry Wolstrom, of Warren Avenue, 



20 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Brockton, Mass., had a pair of bantam fowls. 
One of them broke a leg and died. For a 
month afterwards the bereaved mate refused 
to eat and avoided all companionship. Grad- 
ually it grew thinner and weaker, and finally 
fell dead off its roost. 

THE CRIPPLED STORK 

In a letter to the Presbyterian Banner, 
Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, the distinguished mis- 
sionary, related this story of a stork family 
whose nest was on one of the chimneys of the 
house of Commodore Porter, American min- 
ister to Turkey, who lived at San Stephano. 

While learning to fly a young stork was 
caught by a dog and crippled in one wing. 
Finding that the wing was not broken, but 
only bruised, the commodore tenderly bound 
it up and expected that good feeding and ordi- 
nary care would insure the timely healing of 
the bird. 

The season for the stork's southern flight 
was approaching, and much depended on the 
recovery of the lame bantling. Its strength 
was soon so far restored as to enable it to fly 
down safely and naturally, but it could not rise 
to its nest. Before it had regained courage 
and confidence to join its companions the long 
columns of the annual stork exodus began 
to sweep by and call to the colony at San 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 21 

Stephano with a great clatter of beaks and 
clapping of quills. A company of them held a 
council on the commodore's roof, and finally all 
flew away except two stalwart fellows, selected 
apparently as a sort of "Christian Commis- 
sion" to stay with their wounded kinsbird. 
But, as it proved, they had no notion of 
staying. A little gentle rehearsing rapidly 
improved the convalescent, and in a day or 
two the racket on the chimney-top called out 
the commodore to see the three storks soar 
away together. As they passed southward he 
watched them through his glass. The lame 
bird could not maintain the level of high flight, 
but as it sank lower the others took turns to 
fly under and bear the youngster on their 
backs. So they disappeared. " Fifty miles to 
fly on that line before they can find rest and 
fodder! "exclaimed the commodore. "But those 
gallant birds will do it, or die trying." 

A CANARY'S COMFORT SONG 

The bird was a beautiful singer, says a 
writer in the Youth's Companion, and there was 
rarely an hour of daylight when its sweet notes 
were not heard. Downstairs in the dining- 
room were two love-birds that were always 
close to each other, awake or asleep, and their 
little language, whenever heard, told of their 
caressing tenderness for each other. One of 



22 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

them died, and its inconsolable mate drooped, 
ruffled and silent, on its perch. Its mistress, 
fearing a fatal effect of its lonely grief, carried 
the cage one afternoon to the canary's room 
and hung it next to the cage of the singer. 
The canary hopped to the side nearest the 
little mourner, and its gentle twittering bore 
witness that its heart was touched. It had 
never sung in darkness, and always fell silent 
when a cloth was hung over its cage, but today 
the gathering shadows of evening made no 
difference, and even under the covering cloth 
the soothing twitter of the sympathetic bird 
was heard, with now and then a cheerful 
chirp that seemed to say, "I'm sorry, but 
please don't droop and die." 

All through the dark hours members of the 
family heard at intervals the small comfort- 
ing voice chirp and sometimes sweeten into 
tiny trills of song. 

In the morning the afflicted love-bird was 
seen sitting crouched in a corner, a melancholy 
little fluff of feathers, while, pressed against 
the bars of its cage as near as possible to its 
sad neighbor, stood the affectionate canary, 
still uttering its message of consolation. 

A SPARROW'S LOVING KINDNESS 

There are no Sunday-schools among the 
sparrows where they learn unselfishness and 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 23 

fair play, but some member of their tribe may 
occasionally teach human bipeds a lesson of 
altruism. 

A gentleman in Canterbury, England, while 
feeding the sparrows that congregate about 
his garden, saw one pick up several of the 
largest crumbs and carry them to another 
sitting a little aloof from the rest. Needless 
to say the favored bird welcomed the atten- 
tion, and ate hungrily, as if more than glad 
to enjoy its meal in peace. The gentleman 
kept watch and finally discovered that the 
little feathered beneficiary had but one leg. 

A SWALLOW NURSE 

Henry Berthoud in his "Stories of Bird 
Life" tells of two swallows that were build- 
ing their nest of weed and straw, when the 
female tore her foot with a piece of glass. 
The male compelled her to enter the nest, 
and summoned with piercing notes the sym- 
pathy of his friends. Two swallows came to 
his aid — possibly for surgical consultation. 
By their suggestion or his own, the husband 
of the wounded bird administered "first aid 
to the injured," plastering her foot with mud, 
and then the two good neighbors fell to work 
on the half-completed nest, careful not to 
disturb the narrow bed of the temporary 
patient. When it was finished they went about 



24 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

their business; sure of their pay, no doubt, 
whenever reverse circumstances called for re- 
ciprocal service. The female remained on 
the invalid list with her foot for several days, 
during which her faithful mate fed her regu- 
larly from his beak with gnats and flies, and 
cared for her as devotedly as a human lover 
could. 

IN PRISON YE VISITED ME 

A lady living in Chelsea, England, who was a 
great admirer of birds, kept many of different 
kinds as pets. One of her favorite canaries 
she used to hang outside the window because 
it sang so loudly. One morning a spar- 
row flew down from one of the shade trees, 
and after flitting about the cage, lit upon it, 
and twittered to the little singing captive. 
It seemed like an overture of sympathy, as if 
the visitor meant to say, "Poor prisoner, I 
wonder how you can make such a joyful 
noise!'' 

The canary chirped back to the sparrow, 
but what he said evidently did not alter the 
latter's mood or fancy, for it flew away and 
returned with a crumb, which it dropped into 
the cage. This was the first of a regular series 
of contributions. Every day, at the same 
hour, the golden-coated songster received from 
its free brown friend a worm, an insect, or a 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 25 

crumb, and the two would hold their little 
conversation through the bars — till they grew 
so intimate that the canary took the food out 
of the sparrow's bill. Other cages of pet 
birds belonging to curious neighbors were 
hung near by, and the sparrow fed them all, 
though always lingering longest with its first 
protege. 

In our place, and from our point of view, it 
is easy to credit the innocent little almoner 
with benevolent surprise and pity for its fellow 
bird. A winged creature confined in a wire 
basket! Do such captives ever know how 
much they miss? 



SICK OF THE VAIN WORLD 

Another canary story gives the other 
side of the sparrow's question, and stands 
fairly as its companion piece. The Louisville 
Courier Journal says that a lady in that city 
had hung three canaries in their cages from 
the roof of her balcony, and that one day a 
delicate little stranger of the same species was 
seen clinging to one of them, and apparently 
having a chat with its occupant. Someone 
approached and it flew away, but in an hour 
or two came back and held a little talk at 
every cage in the row, and seemed to be in a 
nervous and eager mood. This time an out- 



26 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

stretched hand caught the bird, and to its 
captor's surprise, the little creature made 
no resistance. A cage of its own was fur- 
nished for the newcomer, and welcomed with 
delight. The stranger was undoubtedly an 
escaped pet that had tried freedom in the 
wicked world long enough, and was happy to 
come again to its bondage and its banquet of 
kindness. 

Centuries of inherited habit spoke in the 
action of the little returning fugitive. It was 
the triumph of generations of breeding "in 
and in" till choice of life in human company 
had become second nature to its kind. The 
bird of too dainty wing for the woods envied 
the safe sister that could sing in a convent. 
Home again, its first thanks would chime 
with the old Christian hymn, 

"Now to you my spirit turns, 
Turns a fugitive unblest, 



receive me into rest." 



A BIRD-MOTHER'S PATIENCE 

A wren built her nest in a box set for birds 
in a New Jersey farmyard. The occupants of 
the farmhouse saw the mother teach her four 
young ones to sing. On the little platform 
in front of their tiny house she sat facing 
them, and sang her whole song very distinctly. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 27 

One of the young ones then attempted 
to imitate her. After a few notes its voice 
broke, and it lost the tune. The mother 
immediately recommenced where the little 
one had failed, and went very distinctly 
through the remainder. The young bird 
made a second attempt, commencing where it 
had ceased before, and continuing as long as 
it was able; and when the note was again lost 
the mother began anew where it stopped, and 
completed the tune. Then the young one 
resumed the song and finished it. This done, 
the mother-bird sang over the whole series 
of notes a second time with great precision, 
and a second young one attempted to follow 
her. The wren pursued the same course 
with this as with the first, and so with the third 
and fourth. This was repeated day after 
day, and several times a day. 

How like the affectionate patience of Su- 
sannah Wesley when teaching her children 
their Bible lessons! A somewhat nervous 
friend, observing their frequent mistakes in 
memorizing, asked her why she could put 
herself to so much trouble — saying the 
same words "over and over again a hun- 
dred times. " 

"Because ninety-nine times wouldn't do," 
answered the mother of the Wesleys. 



28 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

A BIRD-MOTHER'S DISCIPLINE 

A group of theological students at the old 
East Windsor Divinity School, during a 
"nooning" on the grass in the seminary yard, 
amused themselves greatly by watching a 
little domestic scene in an elm tree overhead. 
On a straight limb, sitting in a row, were five 
nestlings of a fly-catcher family, just out, 
with their clean white aprons on, waiting for 
their mother to give them their graduate 
dinner. She soon appeared — a tiny crea- 
ture scarcely bigger than themselves — and 
dropped a worm into the first bird's bill. In 
a minute more she was back again feeding 
the second bird. Again she flew up and fed 
the third. During her absence after another 
worm the last little fellow in the row hopped 
over and crowded himself above the fourth 
bird, evidently thinking to get the next treat. 
The mother on her return saw the ruse at 
once, and skipping the interloper, fed the 
fourth bird. 

Unluckily, at this point the irrepressible 
laughter of the students scared the pretty 
family from their limb, and the watchers 
could only wonder if little rogue No. 5 ever 
got his worm. They were satisfied at least 
that the greedy baby was punished for trying 
to dislocate his mother's arithmetic. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 29 

SINGING FOR A WIFE 

This little idyl of a male wren was published 
in a juvenile paper (whose name escapes us) 
to please the children. It is quite probably 
only a sample case of bird-romances happen- 
ing unnoticed every year. 

A family that believed in bird-houses had 
put up a box with a hole in it "just big 
enough," and watched for the first tenant. 
A bachelor wren came, popped in and out of 
the hole, and perched on the top to sing his 
song. He stayed all day, flitting about the 
pretty box in evident delight or slipping back 
and forth through the door and alighting 
on the roof to take up his happy tune. The 
children were charmed when their elders told 
them he was calling a sweetheart to come and 
keep house. The next day he began to busy 
himself carrying sticks and making clumsy 
attempts to build a nest, but though he 
repeated his calls between times there was no 
sign of a coming bride. The third day he sang 
louder than ever, but heard no voice but the 
music of the robins and finches. His adver- 
tisement of his new house — away up above 
the reach of cats and bad boys — would have 
given points, apparently, to a real estate agent 
and should have fascinated any lady wren. 
But as time went on the disappointed bird 



30 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

sang with a sore heart, for no consort arrived. 
For two weeks the poor little fellow held the 
situation and kept up his blind courtship, 
and then, at last, the hoped-for happened — 
by what telepathic or wireless way of seek-and- 
find the bird-world only knows! 

The children awoke in the morning and 
screamed the glad news. "Wrenny's wife 
has come!" There she sat, a demure mite of 
conjugal birdhood, while the excited bride- 
groom skipped and fluttered about her and, 
half wild with joyful welcome, laid his pos- 
sessions at her feet. Mrs. Wren, quiet as she 
looked, had plenty of feminine independence 
and undoubtedly was laughing "in her sleeve" 
at her husband's domestic preparations. The 
first thing she did was to fling out every stick 
he had put into the "house," and forthwith 
she proceeded to construct a nest in proper 
form. Then she settled down to a happy 
term of housekeeping with her mate and 
raised a brood of six, all of which she brought 
out in good order and without mishap. 

MATRIMONIAL HONOR 

If bird couples ever disagree they do not 
visit the divorce court. A pigeon twelve 
years old owned by a Cheltenham, England, 
tavern keeper was deserted by his mate, 
after she had brought him a numerous prog- 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 31 

eny. He took her loss much to heart, but 
refused to choose a second spouse. 

Two years passed, and the faithless one 
returned to the home she had left and sought 
to resume her conjugal rights. The injured 
husband at first repelled her, and when she 
persisted finally drove her away with scorn and 
personal buffeting. The cote was unguarded, 
however, and at night the determined 
creature managed to steal in and establish 
herself. In the morning matters were so far 
made up that the recreant wife was allowed 
the privilege of domicile and support for the 
rest of her days. Old affection closed with 
a chapter of peace. The noble bird, once 
forsaken by his mate, remained voluntarily 
widowed till her death a few months later. 
Then, believing that no obligation bound him, 
he flew away and returned with a new partner. 

A MOTHER'S SACRIFICE 

In a farm lot near Easton, Maryland, a Mr. 
Matthews at work cutting grass unconsciously 
mowed over a partridge's nest while the brood- 
ing bird was on. The knives of his machine 
passed between her and the eggs, which, of 
course, were all broken. Noticing that the 
partridge did not fly away, the farmer looked 
closer and saw that both her legs and part 
of a wing were cut off, while the rest of her 



32 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

body remained in its perfect state. The poor 
bird, by wild instinct, would naturally have 
risen on wing as soon as the fatal mower came 
near, but she would not leave her nest. To her 
maternal thought and sense each cherished egg 
beneath her breast held a young chick, and 
death found her a martyr to tragic affection. 

LOVE'S BURNT-OFFERING 

A still more affecting case is reported in 
Our Dumb Animals from an eye-witness in 
Virginia of a mother fish-hawk. A gentle- 
man was enjoying a ride on horseback, with 
his daughter, near the Potomac River, when 
the smoke and smell of fire in a neighboring 
woodland surprised them, and a scream over- 
head called their attention to a bird flying 
about in evident distress. It proved to be a 
mother fish-hawk that had a nest in the top 
of a decayed oak tree. Up the dead vines 
that clung to the tree the flames were already 
rapidly climbing, and round and round that 
nest circled the mother bird. Her brood 
were in deadly peril. Her shrieks brought no 
aid, and she could do nothing to save them; 
nor could the two sad spectators. It was 
too late. The fire caught the dry twigs of 
the nest. The poor bird snatched out the 
bits of blazing fagot and grass and fiercely 
fought the flames, but to rescue her little ones 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 33 

was impossible. In her agony she flew wildly 
into the air, and circling once around the 
bed of her doomed darlings, sank down on the 
nest with outspread wings and was burned 
to ashes. She could not save her babes, but 
she could die with them. 

A HEN'S INTELLIGENT LOVE 

During a heavy rainstorm, says the Watch- 
man, a farmer went out to his poultry yard 
to see how his brooding fowls were faring, 
and saw an empty coop, overturned by the 
wind. The hen and chickens that had occu- 
pied it were nowhere in sight. Search soon 
revealed the old hen surrounded by running 
water, where she stood "holding up her dress," 
as it were, and uttering her low alarm note. 
Close investigation showed how inventive 
natural affection can be. Biddy had done 
her best — and it would have done credit to 
a human mother. Under her feathers, hugged 
to her body by her wings, clung her whole 
brood of chickens safe and dry. 

"As a hen gathereth her brood under her 
wings." The . anecdote enriches the loving 
Master's meaning when He used that simile. 

A HEN'S HEROISM 

An Irish inn more or less frequented by rats 
kept a hennery also — a fact of less advan- 



34 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

tage to the fowls than to the four-footed 
lodgers. Accident led a mother hen through 
an empty shed on the premises, followed by 
a single chicken. Certain long-tailed boarders 
in the establishment could best tell why she 
had but one. Suddenly a shriek startled the 
hen, and she caught sight of a rat dragging 
her unfortunate offspring to a hole in the wall. 
She flew at him, and was just in time to seize 
the sneaking robber by the neck. The rat, 
of middle size but a fierce fighter, soon real- 
ized that a fiercer foe had hold of him. She 
snaked him over the floor, shook him, whipped 
and thrashed him to and fro, put out one of 
his eyes, and wore him out so quickly and so 
completely that he scarcely had the first chance 
to offer battle. In twelve minutes, choked, 
stabbed, pelted, and blind, the poultry thief 
lay lifeless, and the brave hen marched off 
with her terrified but not seriously wounded 
only chick. 

Absalom's counselor intimated what "a 
bear robbed of her whelps" would do; but 
plundered affection can make a much weaker 
creature irresistible. 

A CANARY THAT REASONED 

A lady reported to the London Spectator a 
singular instance of her canary's intelligent 
devotion to his mate. While the hen-bird 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 35 

was incubating the weather became intensely 
hot, so that she drooped on her nest, and her 
mistress feared her strength would fail before 
she could hatch her eggs. She watched 
closely, and soon found that the cock bird 
was a knowing nurse. Every time the cup in 
the cage was supplied with fresh, cool water 
he went to it and took a bath, and immediately 
hopped back to his mate and let her bury her 
face in the wet feathers of his breast. With- 
out hands and without a sponge, what more 
could he have done? 



LOVE'S INGENUITY 

A correspondent of Science Gossip mentions 
a curious little episode in the family of two 
thrushes. An invalid lady saw it from her 
window in a tree where they had their nest. 
A heavy rain was falling and the parent birds 
were worried for the welfare of their newly 
hatched young. They flew about in excite- 
ment till one or both hit upon a contrivance. 
With some difficulty they managed to secure a 
stick or splinter which they laid across the nest, 
and spreading their wings, they settled down, 
making a complete umbrella over their brood. 
The shower passed, and, happy that their 
nestlings were safe and dry, the birds in their 
soaked feathers began feeding the little mouths 



36 THE BIRDS' OF GOD 

with grubs and caterpillars as cheerfully as if 
nothing had happened. 

THE WILD DUCK'S DEVICE 

Captain Buchan of the Dorothea, who 
accompanied Franklin on his first Arctic 
voyage, mentions the sagacity of the eider 
ducks in Spitzbergen, in protecting their eggs 
from the prowling foxes. Whenever obliged to 
be temporarily away from their charge they 
"draw the down of the nest over the eggs 
and glue it with a yellow fluid." The down 
keeps the eggs warm, and the smell of the 
"fluid" is such that no fox will touch anything 
tainted with it. 



The tenor of the twenty ensuing anecdotes 
will be bird affection for the human race. 

PIETY OF A SWAN 

There is a touching account in the Christian 
Secretary of Sept. 10, 1879, of a little grave 
marking the last resting-place of a young child, 
close to a beautiful pond in Milford, Conn., 
that was watched day and night by a white 
swan. Her mate would call to her or swim 
near to coax her away, but she would not 
leave her station by the mound over the dust 
of the little being that may once have been 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 37 

her playmate and favorite. She would even 
resent with shrill cries the approach of stran- 
gers, and threaten angry resistance. When 
the fact was recorded the bird had been guard- 
ing the grave for more than a year, and 
hundreds had visited the spot to witness the 
singular sight. Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt, in her 
dainty way, commemorated the fond vigil of 
the beautiful white fowl. 

"Hardly a shadow would she let pass 
Over the baby's cover of grass; 
Only the wind might dare to stir 
The tender lily that watched with her. 
Do I think that the swan was an angel? Oh, 
I think it was only a swan, you know, 
That for some reason winged and wild 
Had the love of a bird for a child." 

A PIGEON'S FATAL GRIEF 

Among the items in the European cable des- 
patches in the year 1901, the case of a broken- 
hearted bird was thought worth reporting. 

At Verviers in Belgium, in the village of 
Henri Chapelle, a pigeon fancier died, and 
while his remains were being conveyed to the 
cemetery, one of his pet birds alighted on the 
coffin, where it stayed until the coffin was 
about to be lowered into the grave. After 
the grave had been filled the bird settled upon 
it, and remained, refusing to be lured away, 
until it starved to death. 



38 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

A SEABIRD'S DEATHBED 

In "Equatorial America" Mr. Ballou re- 
lates this pathetic experience of ocean life. 
A little Spanish girl, a victim of consumption, 
lay in her mother's stateroom, and during 
the voyage had enlisted the love and tender 
pity of every passenger. One day, when the 
ship was approaching the Pacific Coast of 
South America, a small young seabird, wing 
weary and almost exhausted, flew on board 
and was given to the young girl to pet. It 
soon became quite at home with her and would 
eat crumbs and small bits of meat from her 
hands. The two became inseparable, and it 
was a pretty sight to see the gentle creature 
nestle close to the child's bosom. The pleas- 
ure of this new companionship so diverted 
and charmed the feeble patient that at first 
she seemed to gather strength and spirit, but 
the third day after the arrival of the feathered 
stranger she lay in her shroud — with her hand 
resting on the dead body of the bird. The lov- 
ing creature she had petted had given up its 
life almost at the very moment its little mis- 
tress breathed her last. 

The sympathy of the passengers did all it 
could to comfort the weeping mother, but she 
said no word — till a thought of the strange 
kinship of death revealed in the passing of 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 39 

her darling and her darling's favorite together 
into the Eternal Peace seemed to touch her 
heart with a clinging wish. 

"Do birds have souls?" she sobbed. 

"Possibly," was the kind answer. 

"Then the little creature will be my dar- 
ling's company on the way to the good 
God." 

A BABY'S SONG-ANGEL 

In January, 1880, the Sedalia (Mo.) Dem- 
ocrat printed a striking story of a bird that 
never sang but twice. Soon after a young 
couple, Mr. and Mrs. A. D. Trett, came to 
St. Louis, a canary flew into an open window 
of their tenement, where it lived contented, 
but never uttered a single note of song. 

As time went on a child was born to the 
young couple, and at the hour of its birth, 
though the time was long before daybreak, the 
silent bird began to warble a little melody, 
and this became so strong and clear that 
it was* noticed by the neighbors. Then the 
little creature fell silent again till four days 
afterwards, when the life of the frail infant 
was gasping itself away despite the efforts 
of physicians and nurse. Close to midnight, 
while the father held the babe in his arms, a 
low and plaintive trill from the canary was 
heard in the next room. Just at the stroke of 



40 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

twelve the infant expired, and the bird's sad 
music stopped. 

An attendant had slipped into the room a 
moment before to throw a cloth over the cage, 
but there was no need. The canary lay dead 
on the cage floor. 

The parents, educated people and free from 
superstition, were most deeply moved at the 
startling coincidence — as were their friends 
also. They could not help feeling that in some 
mysterious way the lives of the infant and the 
bird were linked together by a hidden destiny. 

THE LITTLE BOY AND THE 
MOCKING-BIRD 

An item similar to the foregoing is quoted 
from the Jacksonville (Fla.) Union. A mock- 
ing-bird used to sing near the window of a 
residence on the corner of Washington and 
Adams Streets, and a small boy, son of the 
white servant of the family, became exceed- 
ingly fond of the singer and found his way at 
every opportunity to the room where he could 
listen to its music. One day the bird flew into 
the room, as if to make its young admirer's 
acquaintance, and parties in the house tried 
in vain to capture it. 

The child fell sick, and it was soon noticed 
that the winged musician had ceased to sing 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 41 

in his favorite tree. Eventually the boy 
died, and the undertaker, while in the room 
where the body lay, preparing it for burial, was 
surprised by the appearance of a mocking-bird 
on the sill of the open window. It entered, 
and after fluttering once or twice round the 
room fell dead on the carpet. 
Was it the same bird? 

JERRY McAULEY'S PLAYMATES 

"Sunday Afternoon" records a reporter's 
visit to Jerry McAuley, the redeemed fighter 
and tough, who became a notable success as 
a missionary in the New York slums. 

It was at one of the rare leisure hours 
of this strenuous Christian worker, when the 
weary man retired to rest his voice and amuse 
and comfort himself in communion with his 
pets of the feathered race. 

About the wall of the attic home, where he 
took his visitor, hung half-a-dozen bird-cages 
holding cardinals and mocking-birds. Jerry 
opened the cage of a mocking-bird, which darted 
out at once and stretched its wings in a brief 
flight up and down the apartment and then 
settled on his head. 

"Want a worm, you rascal?" said Jerry. 

A soft whistle meant "yes" and Jerry told 
him to earn his dinner. The caged creature 
dived inside his open coat, sang a snatch with 



42 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

its head peeping out of a big pocket, pushed its 
way up a wide sleeve, and then flew out pretend- 
ing to attack its master, but its cry of mock 
anger ended in a beautiful burst of melody. 

Jerry brought several meal-worms, and 
rewarded his favorite with a feast. 

"It rests me," he said, "when I've talked 
myself so tired that I can hardly speak, to 
come up here to these birds and see 'em go 
on. The innocent things!" 

"With admiration I watched him," writes 
the visitor, "the tall man whose face had 
become so winsome to me in the months I 
had known it, and that held now all the glee 
of a child as the birds flew about him and 
coaxed him for more meal-worms." 

COULD THOSE NEST MAKERS READ ? 

About as entertaining a discovery as chil- 
dren could make was reported by St. Nicholas 
from a country place not a thousand miles 
from New York City. 

Preparatory to some social affair or public 
amusement in the village, handbills had been 
distributed advertising the good things to be 
expected — like "Music by the Tyrolean 
Quartet; Readings by Professor Bailey; 
Violin solos by Otto Reoschberg; c The Flower 
of the Family' and other rebuses; a tableau 
vivant, 'Our Darlings,' etc." Many of these 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 43 

fliers of course went the way of the wind, 
and were destroyed or picked up by other 
than human collectors. 

During the following summer a New York 
family spent their vacation in that country 
place, and one day the little boy of the family 
came running into the house with sparkling 
eyes, holding in his hand an empty birds' nest, 
and crying, "See what I found!" The little 
fellow was no egg stealer, but in the pretty 
forsaken nest his curiosity had caught sight 
of a printed piece of paper which he carefully 
disengaged from the little builders' web-work 
and spelt out two words in good large type. 

The birds had gleaned some fragments of 
the old handbills, and the two words "Our 
Darlings" happened to be on the largest 
piece. 

The question whether the birds could read 
was not settled, but no one doubted that 
the affectionate phrase was the motto of 
that exquisite sylvan home and its crowded 
inmates. 

WINGED HERO-WORSHIPERS 

There is, now and then, a touch of some- 
thing like intended humor in the association 
of the flying and walking races, where the 
former have a point to carry or a choice of 
place to settle. 



44 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Many have laughed over the announcement 
that a bird's nest was found on the top of 
Oom Paul's statue hid in his tall hat. Others 
admired the characteristically Dutch charity 
and thriftiness which had an eye to use as 
well as honor when they left the top of his 
hat-crown wide open. 

Real mockery or disrespect cannot be 
charged to bird pleasantry when it takes 
liberties with dignity, and it is easier to credit 
it to a confidence that would be too chummy 
in human manners towards the persons of the 
great, or even their effigies. 

When the Duke of Wellington's statue was 
taken down and moved to another place, 
inside the brim of the great cocked hat, resting 
on the head, was found a starling's nest. In 
the elbow of the left arm was another starling's 
nest, with a family of fledglings in it, and 
under the right arm was a sparrow's nest with 
several eggs and one young sparrow. 

Our smile that hints objective humor in all 
this may mistake a sentiment which points 
to the adjective rather than the noun. Pos- 
sibly the innocent drollery of the birds is the 
pictorial side of hero-worship. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 45 

CULTURE OF BIRD AFFECTION 

Dean Farrar's recollection always lingered 
lovingly over the kindly life and lessons en- 
joyed at the home of a country gentleman 
who taught his children to watch the missel- 
thrush's nest till the timid bird learned to sit 
there fearlessly, and not flit away at their 
approach; and to visit the haunts of the moor- 
hen without causing any consternation to her 
or her black velvet progeny. Visitors who 
stayed at the house were always delighted to 
see . . . the swans float up to the boys, and 
plume their mantling wings, expecting food 
and caresses. 

"He that would have friends must show 
himself friendly." The husband of Queen 
Victoria must have been such a man if a great 
poet's tribute to him was not merely a graceful 
hyperbole. Tennyson is quoted as saying, 
months after the Queen's bereavement, "The 
nightingales have not sung at Farringford 
since the Prince Consort died." 

A LITTLE BOY'S GALLANT IMPULSE 

The boy Adelbert was the son of a German 
nobleman, but he had within him a sympathy 
for all God's humblest creatures that birth 
and social advantages could not spoil. He 
noticed one spring morning a young dove 



46 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

trying its wings in feeble, staggering flight, 
and saw that its efforts were bringing it danger- 
ously near the pond in the castle grounds, for 
it was unable to guide itself. As he watched 
the new fledgling so recently out of the nest, 
the little fellow feared that its giddy move- 
ments would carry it over the water, where if 
it dropped it would certainly drown. And, 
sure enough, that very thing happened. 

The distressed child stood a moment be- 
wildered at the sight of the struggling bird in 
the water, then, espying an empty washtub 
that a servant had left by the garden wall, 
he dragged it to the pond, and with a garden 
rake, caught up as he ran, worked himself in 
his queer craft from the bank to the drowning 
bird. The rescue was just in time, and he 
managed to reach the shore with his cranky 
vessel and the half-dead bantling. Covering 
all but its bill in his bosom, Adelbert carried 
the bird at once to his mother, who instantly 
took means to restore it. 

Unknown to him, she had watched the whole 
incident from her window. Her first concern 
for his sudden venture had changed to admira- 
tion for his deed, and her gentle remonstrance 
for the risk he ran ended in a fervent "God 
bless you." To her the act denoted the char- 
acter of her son, and the boy prefigured the 
man. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 47 

Little Adelbert became the benevolent 
German Count der Recke of blessed memory, 
whose goodness to the poor of his country, and 
whose whole life of loving kindness made him 
an example to his generation. 

BLACK PENSIONERS 

"The ravens do lack, and suffer hunger. 
They seek their meat from God." Sometimes 
there is a riot of hunger when they "seek," 
and a lesson of divine indulgence is needed. 
Like all God's family, the crows, and all their 
sooty and omnivorous cousins-german, can 
urge a vested right — the indisputable claim 
of nativity. But the bestowing hands of their 
Maker are apt to be human hands. In every 
such case reason must make its own patience 
when importunate appetite pleads. 

A kind lady in Surrey, England, who was 
in the habit of throwing morsels to the rooks in 
the winter season, opened her window one 
cold morning, expecting her servant to bring 
the supply they waited for; but the servant 
delayed beyond the usual time, and she re- 
turned to bed, forgetting to close the window, 
and soon fell asleep. 

A strange confusion in the room broke her 
slumber, and, half-awake, she uttered a cry 
of surprise and alarm. Members of the 
household ran in, and found nineteen half- 



48 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

starved rooks in the room, and eleven of them 
were on the bed, pecking the counterpane. 

ARTIFICIAL NESTS 

The Boston Transcript quoted from the 
London Express an example of human con- 
sideration by the Swiss. In 1903 the munici- 
pality of Orbe, in the Canton of Vaud, placed 
ready-made nests, closely imitating the original 
types of various bird architecture, in the trees 
throughout the district, in order to protect 
and preserve insect-eating birds. The branches 
of the trees were studded with sharp nails to 
prevent access to the nests by snakes and 
other enemies. 

Blackbirds and thrushes were the first to 
show their appreciation of the conveniences 
provided, but soon other members of the 
feathered tribe followed their lead. A native 
naturalist conducts this interesting branch of 
industry, which is mostly in the hands of the 
women. 

Similar provision for the birds is not un- 
known in this country, especially in the cities; 
and private regard, as well as economy and 
taste, has surrounded many a home in the 
country with a summer village of little winged 
cottagers who pay their house-rent by helping 
protect their protectors and by the music they 
make. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 49 

When women vote it is possible that State 
legislation will favor the Swiss practise in 
some form — as soon as the public war on 
the leaf-destroyers has further demonstrated 
the need of feathered assistants. 

AN ARMY SHIELDING A SWALLOW 

Historic examples that shame the human 
cruelty, too sadly common, are noted in the 
four following numbers. 

Charles V., Emperor of Germany and Spain, 
was conducting a weary siege before an old 
town near the French boundary, when one of 
his Spanish guards discovered a bird that 
seemed to make herself at home near the 
royal tent, and closer investigation revealed a 
swallow's nest on the top of the tent, hidden 
behind the supports of the stately decorations. 
The bird had just flown to the nest, and was 
sitting there contentedly in the rain. The 
rough soldiers, soured by the inclement 
weather, resented the intrusion, and would 
have driven her away. "The saucy thing 
mistakes the General's canopy for a Vandal's 
hut," they grumbled. 

The Emperor heard, and came out to see 
his uninvited guest. 

"Let her stay," he said. "The little lady 
is visiting the King. Her husband has left 
her, and she has come to me for protection." 



50 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Anything to make mirth was welcome in 
the irksome life of the entrenchments, and the 
joking guards spread the story through the 
camp that the Commander-in-chief was shield- 
ing "a deserter's wife." Roars of laughter 
everywhere showed how the army relished the 
yarn. Even after they knew the truth it con- 
tinued to amuse them, though the fun was of 
a more innocent sort. 

The swallow lived in state, watched by 
officers and men; and when the town was 
taken, and the siege raised, the troops began 
to break camp, and would have taken down 
the Emperor's tent, but he ordered them to 
let it stand. So it remained, for the bird's 
sake, and she consummated her domestic duty, 
and flew away with her brood. 

The weather soon left nothing but a ragged 
relic of the imperial pavilion, but the story of 
a king's kindness still survives. 

THE VALUE OF A SPARROW 

"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? 
and one of them shall not fall on the ground 
without your Father." 

It is well that there are men who have 
enough of the divine tenderness in them to 
represent that text. More then half a far- 
thing's worth was spent in care and con- 
sideration for one little bird that had set up 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 51 

housekeeping in one of the freight cars in a 
Michigan railway yard. 

Five conductors signed a letter to the 
Division Superintendent at Saginaw, request- 
ing his order to sidetrack car 12,270. A 
sparrow had built her nest in it, and the nest 
held a family of helpless young ones. 

The appealing tale of her anxious house- 
wanderings begins at the time this car stood 
chalkmarked on the repair trucks at Mus- 
kegon. When, sometime after, directions came 
to take it away, the night-watchman, who 
knew what the sparrow had been doing, told 
the conductor, and said he wished the car 
could have stayed longer. But rolling stock 
was wanted, and orders were orders. Con- 
ductor Stark moved the car to Fremont, and 
then to White Cloud, coupled it to train 101, 
and handed it over to Conductor Batterna, 
telling him its story. Batterna hauled the 
car to Big Rapids, and dropped it, but sent 
word to Conductor Burrit about the bird. 
Burrit hauled the car back to White Cloud, 
leaving the door a little open so that the 
sparrow could get to her nest. Conductor 
Willoughby, who took the car to Baldwin in 
train 210, was on the lookout for the tiny 
passengers, and so was Conductor Hess, who 
took car 12,270 to Saginaw. 



52 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

All this time, and over all the leagues of 
road, the poor bird-mother had followed that 
car, and sometimes rode upon it, but never 
could be sure of finding it if she flew away to 
get food. Somehow the spirit of Him who 
said, "Your heavenly Father feedeth them," 
kept guidance on every journey, and saw the 
promise fulfilled. By the time the old van 
reached Saginaw again every employee on the 
connected routes had heard of the sparrow and 
her family, and pitied their troubles, and when 
the petition of the five conductors came to 
headquarters there was sympathy enough 
accumulated behind it to infect the man- 
agement. The trainmaster consulted with 
the officers of the road — and Mrs. Spar- 
row's worries were over. Car 12,270 was 
not to be moved or molested "till further 
orders." 

And the order held good till her children 
grew out of their nest and took their flight 
with their faithful mother. 



A MIXED RESCUE 

The Sunday School Classmate has this 
narrative of bird hospitality during common 
danger, in the terrible blizzard that swept the 
Eastern States in the month of March thirty- 
three years ago. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES S3 

A wealthy and kind-hearted gentleman of 
New York City had housed his flock of pet 
pigeons so strongly and securely that their 
lofts seemed proof against any storm or cold; 
but the fearful, and in some cases fatal, March 
tempest so much surpassed all records, that 
even this confident bird-owner felt uneasy 
about his favorites. Early in the afternoon 
he made his way with his man through the 
bitter gale and the wet snow to the bird-house, 
and found several of its inmates overcome 
with cold, and a few chilled to death. He at 
once caused them all to be gathered and placed 
in a warm room. This work of necessity was 
done hurriedly, and with some blind lumping 
of loads in the driving tempest; and on going 
into the new refuge a while later, the proprietor 
saw half the pigeons flitting happily about in 
their cosier quarters and the rest walking 
gravely around and among a number of smaller 
strangers (that had shared their rescue, 
unnoticed) as if asking their names, and 
offering acquaintance and welcome. One 
would infer without guessing that the unin- 
vited refugees were English sparrows. To 
believe that these little fellows had fled, 
terrified and half-frozen, to the offered shelter 
of the dove colony, and were harbored there 
through fellow-feeling, adds another charm 
to one episode of the great storm. 



54 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

THE BIRD BETWEEN TWO GUN-FIRES 

An incident of the Civil War related by the 
Rev. G. O. Beebee reminds us that human 
mercy even in a scene of battle can take account 
of our inferior fellow creatures. 

During the siege of Charleston, S. C, in 
May, 1863, Battery F, Third New York 
Artillery, was stationed on Folly Island. 
Under cover of the woods on James Island the 
Confederates had located, and were preparing 
to fight. A volley was fired among them from 
the Rodman guns, and while the cannonade 
went on, General Vodges, the Union Com- 
mander, was heard issuing the following strange 
order: "Captain Janney, order your men to 
cease firing, and send a man to scare away that 
bird from the branch hanging over the creek." 
His fear that the bird would be killed caused 
some sly mutual glances between the rough men 
of his command, but there were eyes that 
moistened at the sound of that sudden check- 
word from the grim old soldier in the face of 
the foe, and not one of his followers could 
deny that the touch of human tenderness 
added luster to his courage and character. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 55 

A BIRD THAT CHANGED A RAILWAY 
ROUTE 

It is told of Gen. David S. Stanley of the 
United States Army that while surveying a 
way for an important section of railroad across 
the prairies, with a large force of soldiery and 
military engineers, he suddenly stopped in 
front of the line, and shouted "Halt!" 

He had discovered a bird's nest in the grass 
directly before the feet of his horse. After 
looking down a moment at the frightened 
mother and her callow young he turned 
his horse, and gave the order, "Left 
oblique!" 

His whole astonished train of two thousand 
men, twenty-five hundred mules and horses, 
and two hundred and fifty loaded wagons 
swerved from their straight course, and made 
a wide bend; though at first scarcely one 
questioner could guess what the obstruction 
was. They could have killed a murdering 
Indian and passed on, but, though amply 
armed for any enemy, the General had not 
brought an army across the plains to trample 
on a bird's nest. 

A bias in the line of road at that spot com- 
memorates the gentle-heartedness of a brave 
leader. 

A similar action has been asserted of Abra- 



56 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

ham Lincoln on a march at the head of his 
troop during the Black Hawk War. In fact, 
it is part of his renown that he could never, 
on foot or horse, pass a suffering bird or beast 
without stopping to attempt rescue or relief. 

CHAMPIONS OF THE GOOSE 

Sven Hedin in his book " Trans-Himalaya " 
writes, "Many a noble and sensitive heart 
beats in the cold and desolate valleys of 
Thibet." And if the instance below gives an 
average example of their people, he has proved 
his statement. 

While passing the Saka Dzong one of his 
caravan shot a wild goose, and Oang Gye, son 
of the governor of the province, was very 
sorrowful and displeased at the act. To him 
it was murder, and he told the explorer he 
could not conceive how he could let his servant 
be so cruel. 

"You are right," Hedin answered. "I am 
myself sorry for the wild goose, but you must 
remember that we are travelers, and depend- 
ent for our livelihood on what the country 
yields. Often the chase and fishing are our 
only resource." 

"But in this district you have plenty of 
sheep," said Oang. 

"But is it not just as wrong to kill sheep, 
and eat their flesh?" 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES S7 

"No," exclaimed the native with passionate 
decision. "That is quite another matter. 
You will surely not compare sheep with wild 
geese. There is as much difference as between 
sheep and human beings. . . . The goose 
which has just been bereaved of her mate will 
seek him fruitlessly day and night, and will 
never leave the place where he has been mur- 
dered. Her life will be empty and forlorn, 
and she will remain a widow, and soon die of 
grief. A woman cannot mourn more deeply 
than she will, and the man who has caused 
such sorrow draws down a punishment on 
himself." 

Hedin adds, "I had heard in the Lob 
Country similar tales of the sorrow of the 
swans when their union was dissolved by death. 
It was moving to witness Oang Gye's tender- 
ness for the wild geese, and I felt the deepest 
sympathy for him." 

One would infer from this anecdote that 
there are among the "benighted" (?) sub- 
jects of the Grand Lama, isolated on "the 
roof of the world," a good many members 
of the Audubon Society, unreported, but in 
good and regular standing. 

KILLED BY SCOLDING 

Sven Hedin's testimony to the sensibility 
of pagans compels us to some self-accusing for 



58 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

our too common indifference to the sensibility 
of birds. 

A good lady of the Old Bay State, for no 
fault of hers, was late in preparing dinner 
for her husband one Sunday, and he rebuked 
her with harsh words. When he had said his 
say the two sat down to a silent meal, the wife 
in an unhappy mood, smarting with a sense 
of injustice. A beautiful canary in its cage 
began to chirp, as it always did, to attract her 
attention. She loved it fondly, and had never 
spoken a cross word to it in all its life. For- 
getting everything for the moment but her 
resentment at the lashing she had just received, 
she flashed a cruel speech at the little bird in 
her husband's own style and tone, as if to 
shame him. It was a mad act — and a fatal 
one, as she soon realized. A flutter of wings was 
heard in the cage, and going to it she found 
that her pet had dropped dead from its perch. 

The wife of the late Vice-President Hen- 
dricks confided to a friend that, feeling an- 
noyed one day by the loud singing of her 
canary, she stopped it with a sharp scolding, 
and pretended to throw something at it. The 
bird drooped — and in five minutes was dead. 

The change of look and manner in a faithful 
dog or horse, when cursed or yelled at> has 
been too often witnessed to be forgotten; and 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 59 

birds are living structures of more sentient 
and palpitating consciousness than beasts or 
fishes. 

WORTH A BENEDICTION 

If there is a patron saint of birds par emi- 
nence^ the holder of that gentle office by uni- 
versal understanding and belief must be St. 
Francis of Assisi; but, among the Mexicans, 
"Creatures of Service and Companionship" 
are supposed to be the special proteges of St. 
Anthony. And a pretty custom is told of 
the annual visit, on March 5, of the children 
to their padre, bringing their tame birds 
to him, after gilding their bills and putting 
wreaths around their necks, that he may 
pronounce his blessing on them, and sprinkle 
them with holy water. 

The claims of the birds upon the church are 
stronger than their need of its ordinances, 
but it is pleasant to know that the church 
recognizes them with its benediction. 

Bird Emblems and Omens 

ANCIENT TYPES OF CHARACTER, etc. 

Juno's peacock, Venus' yoke of doves, and 
Pallas Athena's owl are classic commonplaces. 
Pallas' owl, at least, retains its significance, 



60 THE BIRDSOF GOD 

for that bird has been the emblem of wisdom 
ever since the most learned goddess of the 
Greek Pantheon bequeathed it to poetry and 
civilization. Save now and then a king or 
some other very important personage, indi- 
viduals have left to civic choice and custom 
the adoption of birds as types of character 
and fortune. 

To St. Peter the cock must have been a vocal 
conscience ever after he denied his Master — 
if every sight of one of its species was not a 
new spelling of old remorse. Centuries earlier 
Themistocles chose the cock for his ensign 
because the triumphant crowing of that bird 
prophesied his victory at Artemisium the day 
before the battle was fought. As tokens of 
events in personal or family life, birds do not, 
however, commonly appear in private heraldry; 
but in human association they are, and ever 
will be to man, the winged parables and moral 
monitors that inspire, instruct, and warn him. 
As conventional emblems the nations have 
appropriated them — seven, at least, dis- 
playing on flag or escutcheon some figure of 
their characteristic bird. 

REINHABITED 

To almost any one seeking a type of life a 
representative with wings would seem the most 
natural and significant selection. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 6l 

An instance illustrating in a peculiar way 
Whittier's saying that "Life is ever lord of 
death" is related by Sergeant-Major Williams, 
in his " Scenes and Adventures in Afghanistan." 

During the march of the English Army from 
Ghuznee, in the Afghan war of 1840, while 
searching for water, a number of skeletons 
was found in a nearly filled dry well. The 
bones proved to be the remains of some 
British soldiers who disappeared while on 
scout duty in a previous expedition. A lark 
had made its nest in one of the skulls, and 
was seen innocently reposing with its young 
in the strange receptacle. 

Where a human brain moved out a little 
bird moved in. 

A WREN MASCOT 

An old tradition of the inhabitants of the 
Isle of Man asserts that a sea-spirit which 
haunted the herring grounds, and raised 
storms, finally took the form of a wren, and 
flew away. With the curious notion that the 
body of this species of bird acts as a counter- 
spell to keep bad weather away, the Manx 
fishermen carry a dead wren in each vessel of 
their herring craft. 

A live wren lit, it is said, on Nelson's ship 
at the battle of the Nile, and was hailed as a 
happy omen. 



62 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

"PROUD AS A PEACOCK" 

Of the ridiculous pretension which vanity 
inspires we have the well-known illustration 
in the old fable of the jackdaw that stuck 
peacock feathers in its own tail. 

But the peacock himself has seldom, if 
ever, emphasized his self-admiration quite so 
noticeably, in a single, concrete example, as 
Arthur C. Benson describes in the London 
Spectator. Instinctive vanity in this bird's 
case went deeper than the parade of its plumes 
for the admiration of the females of his flock, 
and became a craze of complacency, and self- 
worship. 

". . . The bird began by sedulously frequent- 
ing the stable-yard, and whenever the carriage 
was brought out of the coach-house he would 
take his stand by it, and gaze at his reflection 
in the panels. He then took to accompanying 
the carriage up to the house, and, standing 
beside it at the front door, engaged in self- 
contemplation. He now runs behind the 
carriage, when it starts from the house, down 
to a certain point of the drive, apparently in 
the hope that it may stop, and allow him to 
continue his favorite occupation. 

"It occurred to us to wonder what he would 
do if a looking glass were placed on the lawn. 
This was accordingly done, and he at once 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 63 

found it out. Nothing will induce him to 
quit it. He will stand by it for hours together. 
At first he occasionally looked inquisitively 
behind the glass at intervals to see if a bird 
was actually present, but he has given this 
up now. He stands in front of it, entirely 
absorbed, often motionless for a long time, 
occasionally moving his head gently up and 
down, and sometimes softly touching the glass 
with his bill, appearing slightly bewildered 
by the contact. If food is thrown to him he 
takes no notice, unless it is close to the glass, 
when he will hurriedly gobble it up and return 
to his more congenial employment in haste, 
as though vexed at being interrupted. If the 
glass is taken into the drawing-room, which is 
on the ground floor looking into the garden, 
he will enter the room by door or window, 
find the glass, and continue his favorite pursuit; 
and he spends the greater part of the day at 
the door that leads from the drawing-room into 
the garden in the hope that some one may 
bring out his glass for him. 

"Meanwhile the peahen is sitting on a nest of 
eggs in a hedge close at hand. He never goes 
near her, his only idea being to find opportu- 
nities for contemplating his own perfections." 

The story is not only a new cap to the old 
saying, but an admonition of what vanity 
can grow to be. 



64 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

A SYMBOL OF PEACE 

Buchanan Reade, just after the battle of 
Winchester (Shenandoah Valley) was stopping 
at a hotel in Washington and was present 
while two of the most eminent men of that time 
were discussing the situation, the terms of 
settlement, and the demands that peace would 
make upon statesmanship. He had come in 
from the dinner-table, and was rather the 
w T orse for wine, but the word "peace," and the 
tone in which it was reiterated, seemed to 
start him awake, and kindle his poetic instinct. 
His eyes flashed, and sitting erect in his chair 
he cried: 

"O that some beautiful bird of the South 
Would build its nest in the cannon's mouth 
And stop the terrible roar forever!" 

and with that last word he sank back into his 
lethargy as quickly as he had come out of it. 
A Boston journalist who was present, and 
heard Reade's impromptu > visited Shenandoah 
Valley years afterwards, when luxuriant Nature 
had partly repaired the waste of war, and 
noticed a rusty cannon set at the entrance 
of a beautiful enclosure that had been the 
scene of one of the fiercest battles. The place 
was a cemetery where fallen soldiers of both 
armies slept their last sleep, and the old 
cannon stood as if to guard 



-Sm*5*^- >; 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 65 

" The bivouac of the dead." 

Going nearer, he saw something in the muzzle 
of the rusty field-piece. A bluebird had built 
her nest in the cannon's mouth. 

GARFIELD'S VISITORS 

Brigadier-General Garfield had made 
himself the "hero of Chickamauga." Riding 
everywhere over the bullet-swept cottonfield, 
directing batteries, shouting orders, and ani- 
mating the men, he had been a whirlwind in the 
thick of the fight, and when the tide of battle 
seemed to be turning, he had sat down with pen- 
cil and paper, sheltered by a tree, while the 
leaden storm went on, to write a dispatch to Gen- 
eral Rosecrans, the commander. Through the 
heaviest of the firing a white dove came and, 
hovering over his head a moment, lit on the 
highest branch of the tree, and remained till 
he had finished writing. Then it left the tree 
and flew away to the north. Chief Engineer 
William B. Gow, who was with Garfield, relates 
the incident. 

After General Garfield had become the nomi- 
nee for the presidency, a reporter of a Cincinnati 
paper, the Herald and Presbyter, interviewed 
him at the national capital, and inquired 
about the eagle which, according to rumor, 
had come to him as if to bring news of his 
victory at the convention. 



66 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

"Yes," said Garfield, "the incident was true, 
and a strange one. That day a large eagle 
was seen in Washington swooping about over 
the city, and at last lighting down upon 
my house. Allowing for the difference of 
time between Chicago and Washington, that 
moment was the very moment of my nomi- 
nation." 

Something more reverent than fancy will 
meditate over those two bird-visits to the 
great man who was our second presidential 
martyr. 

THE TSAR'S PIGEONS 

The London Telegraph repeated from a 
St. Petersburg paper a story connected in 
a mysterious way with the sad fate of 
Alexander II. 

The imperial pigeons at the palace, like 
their kind in the San Marco Plaza, Venice, are 
privileged birds, and faithfully watched and 
guarded night and day. But through his 
bedroom window, one morning, the emperor 
saw three of them lying dead on his balcony. 
Investigation showed that a huge hawk had 
taken up his quarters in some nook of the 
Winter Palace roof, and had begun to make 
regular raids at daybreak on the royal pigeon- 
roosts. Armed preparation and all precau- 
tions possible did not stop the slaughter, until 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 67 

a powerful trap caught the robber, and at 
early dawn one morning he was seen on the 
roof struggling fiercely to get free. Before 
the servants could reach the spot the hawk 
had dragged the heavy trap over the edge of 
the parapet, and fallen with it to his death 
on the paving of the courtyard. 

The career of the bird, that began and ended 
with blood, impressed the Tsar with melan- 
choly forebodings. "The whole affair is an 
omen," he said. A fortnight later Alexander 
was murdered. 



PROPHETIC BIRDS 

The American Field asserts, as a general 
fact, that birds foresee an epidemic, and forsake 
the threatened locality. This was seen in the 
outbreak of cholera in Hamburg, and in 1884 
at Marseilles and Toulon, where all the 
birds, apparently by common impulse, aban- 
doned the plague-stricken cities, and took 
up their abode at Hyeres, which escaped 
the pestilence. The great influx of birds 
there at the time was much commented on by 
the inhabitants. 

In 1872 all the sparrows left the town of 
Puzemsyl *(in Galicia) two days before the 
appearance of the cholera pest, and not a 
single bird returned, so far as observation 



68 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

went, before the end of November, when the 
plague had disappeared. 

In 1887 in Java, before the great earthquake, 
every rooster crowed loudly and left the 
doomed locality, and in the city of Iquiqui 
(Peru) the terrible earthquake of 1878 was 
announced many hours beforehand by great 
swarms of gulls and other seabirds which flew 
inland. 

BIRD EMBLEMS OF TRUTH AND 
COUNSEL 

A few instances that belong rather to 
mythology will show at least how the observed 
characteristics of native birds have influenced 
ethnic ideas in different lands, and helped to 
shape the poetry of nations. 

Odin's most useful feathered friends, Hugin 
and Munin (Mind and Memory), were ravens. 
The Koran says that when the Queen of Sheba 
and her foreign train found themselves at a loss 
on entering Jerusalem, and seeking the most 
direct way to Solomon's superb palace, a 
lapwing came and guided her to the presence 
of the king. The lapwing is a truth-teller, 
and the Scandinavians account for it by 
translating her speech and making her a winged 
conscience. Their story is that she was once 
a handmaid of the Blessed Virgin, but when 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 69 

she purloined her mistress' silver scissors the 
Exalted Lady transformed her to a bird with 
a forked tail to remind her of her theft, and 
with a voice that could only say "Tyvit, tyvit" 
— "I stole them, I stole them." 

BIRD EMBLEM OF ALTRUISM 

There may have been some curious founda- 
tion in fact for the poetical tribute several 
years ago in Baldwin's Monthly to a bereaved 
mother-bird. A childless partridge in her 
lonely wandering flew across a field, and espied 
a lark's nest in the grass, with one egg in it. 
The egg was cold, and the nest evidently 
deserted. Walking about it sedately, the 
partridge finally settled herself down to brood 
the egg. Eventually a young lark was warmed 
to life, and broke the shell. The partridge 
cherished it, and when at last it left the nest, 
led it tiptoeing through the harvest fields, and 
along the fern alleys of the forest. But the 
young bird soon learned to fly, and developed 
a strangely sweet voice; and as it grew stronger 
it suddenly rose one morning into the air, 

"Up to the heavens bright and blue 
In extacy of song." 

Naturally the poetic sequel of the story is 
that the humble, hen-like stepmother consoled 
herself for the loss of her chicken, with the 



70 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

consciousness that she had brought up a vocal 
genius, and given a new singer to the world 
in her foster-child. 

BIRD EMBLEM OF SYMPATHY 

A lady correspondent of the Cartersville 
(Ga.) Free Press tells this touching episode 
of a family sorrow. 

About the time my lately deceased little 
babe was taken sick, a beautiful pigeon came 
to me one evening while I was sitting on my 
piazza, and after hovering around for a while, 
lighted on my knee, and cautiously advanced 
to my bosom. It nestled there some moments, 
and left reluctantly when I rose to retire. This 
conduct it repeated for several evenings, and 
then it disappeared as suddenly and mys- 
teriously as it came. 

BIRD EMBLEMS OF CHIVALRY 

Mrs. Dallas Lore Sharp has described in 
the Youth's Companion a scene of battle in 
the pretty square of a little village. The 
" field" of strife was a maple tree. A red 
squirrel had robbed a redstart's nest, and the 
parent birds were attacking him, flashing 
through the leaves, hissing, whizzing, and 
darting about him, determined, undoubtedly, 
to pick out his eyes. 

The squirrel was doing his best at quick 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 71 

dodging, but was getting the worst of the fight 
until chance enabled him to rise and strike. 
A hit or two put the birds on their guard, and 
following his advantage, he chased them all 
over the tree. Just then a shrill war-cry 
swept over the square, and a squad of half-a- 
dozen sparrows plunged into the conflict like 
a charge of canister, and took the redstarts' 
part. Falling on the red thief like little demons, 
they soon put him on the defensive, racing 
him and pelting him up and down from trunk 
to top, till after exhausting every lightning 
duck and shift to save his face, he almost 
tumbled from the tree, catching only by a 
bottom twig. The avenging sparrows were 
after him, and the kink was gone out his tail, 
but he finally got away alive, and hid under 
a band-stand. 

The poor redstarts had stood aside to let 
their brave auxiliaries finish the punishment; 
but one can imagine their "thank you's" 
when the sparrows flew away. 

Whatever may be said against the English 
sparrow, the little fighter knows the weaker 
side in a quarrel, and his warlike temper 
impels him to rush in where cowards fear to 
tread. 



72 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

BIRD EMBLEM OF HONESTY 

Irrational Nature is all the time at work 
making metaphors of human duty and virtue. 
We sometimes hear a housewife complain that 
such and such a hen in her flock "stole her 
nest." But a bank thief does not cackle when 
he slips away with a few thousand dollars not 
his own. The difference between him and 
the hen is that she gets away with her own 
property and then tells the public where she 
hid it. An odd little episode of car travel one 
day, in a Connecticut county, may find place 
in the line of bird examples. 

The cowcatcher of a New York, New Haven, 
and Hartford train in passing through 
Thomaston Village on March 5, 191 1, picked 
up a Plymouth Rock hen. The engineer and 
fireman supposed that of course the hen was 
dead, and thought no more about it, but 
when the train reached the rock quarries at 
Plymouth (Litchfield Co.), and the brakemen 
shouted "Plymouth," the hen hopped off the 
cowcatcher, cackling, and, caught between the 
bars, appeared a new-laid egg. Biddy was 
telling everybody that she was neither dead 
nor a "dead-head," to steal a less than ten- 
mile ride. 

The laughing crew and passengers did not 
credit her with any moral motive, but some 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 73 

suggested a humorous one — as if she had 
"played possum" till she heard her old family 
name called out at the next station, and con- 
cluded she would rather get out and walk. All, 
however, agreed that she was a good hen. She 
had paid her fare, and could hold up her head 
for honesty with the best of her honored breed. 

BIRD EMBLEM OF "GOOD NIGHT" 

The crowing cock, emblem of Dawn, is made 
much of in the drama of "Chanticleer," where 
the bird boasts that there could be no morning 
if he did not give the signal. Almost as closely 
associated with sunset by the natives of 
Dominica is the Myarchus Oberi, the plaintive 
little singer that always repeats its note at 
the last edge of day. There is no twilight in 
that tropic land, but certain as a clock, just 
before daylight becomes darkness, this bird's 
liquid call sounds from the forest, "Soli 
kooshay, soli kooshay," as if announcing to 
the country folk that night and bedtime are 
at hand. The San Domingo people (whose 
language is French) translate the song into 
the almost exactly homophonic " Soleil con- 
cher" announcing sunset; and the weird-like 
singer is known by them as "The Sunset Bird." 
Their claim, however, that it has never been 
seen, and is not a living but a spirit bird, has 
been disproved by Mr. Frederick Ober, the 



74 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

naturalist, after whom it was named. He 
procured several specimens of it — a shy 
creature very like a kingbird in form and size, 
with back and wings of drab, and pale yellow 
(instead of white) breast. 

BIRD EMBLEM OF HAPPINESS 

In his striking play, "The Blue Bird," 
Maeterlinck, the Belgian dramatist, inevitably 
suggests our own (single word) favorite, the 
little pioneer of spring with his sociable twitter 
and flute-like warble, and wearing the tint 
of heaven on its plumage. The composer's 
bird of the sky-like hue is pictured as both 
the symbol and secret of gladness — a sort of 
recipe for the cure of the unhappy, as our blue- 
bird deserves to be. In the drama children 
are always hunting for the Blue Bird, but 
when captured the pretty creature escapes. 

BIRD EMBLEMS OF FAITH AND 
CONTENTMENT 

"I sat upon a crag" (over a gorge in Switzer- 
land), wrote a traveling correspondent of the 
Christian Intelligence, "and as I looked down 
to the dizzy depth of the glen I saw a little 
bird light on a slender branch that grew out 
of the rocky wall a hundred feet above the 
roaring torrent at the bottom. The wind 
swayed the bough where the little feet clung, 




\ 



ROSE - BREASTED GROSBEAK 

(Upper Figure, Male; Lower Figure, Female) 

Order — Passeres Family — Fri ngi lli t>je 

Genus — Zamelodia Species— Ludoviciana 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 75 

and the spray of streaming waterfall drenched 
it, but I could catch now and then the sweet 
contented note of the tender visitor as it 
perched there in brave security. It knew it 
had wings, and could rise and fly away. And 
I said, 'I would be like that; God's little 
bird! I could sit safely on His finger in the 
tumult and wrack of time.'" 

Under the awful plunge of the Cataracts, 
the "Vernal" and the " Bridal Veil," in the 
Yosemite, the water-wagtails find homes on 
the banks of the Merced, and when the wind 
through the canyon swings the Falls aside a 
moment, and blows the crashing sheets of 
water into spray, in the brief interval one can 
always hear the cheerful voices of those glad 
birds. 

Martin Luther rebuked his anxieties more 
than once by observing the birds. "How 
glad they are! They have no worries about 
any want or scarcity that may come; so con- 
tent in themselves, and singing with happy 
hearts. Well might we take off our hats to 
one of them and say: 'My dear Sir Doctor, 
I must confess I have not acquired this art 
of which thou art master. Thou sleepest 
sweetly all night in thy little nest; thou risest 
again in the morning joyful and well off, to 
find thy food, and then sittest on a tree to 



76 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

praise God. Why cannot I, old fool that I 
am, do the same when I have so much reason 
to do it.'" 

BIRD EMBLEMS OF BROTHERHOOD 
AND CONSECRATION 

At a session of the Syracuse convention of 
the Wesleyan Methodists near Chiltengo, 
N. Y., says the St. Louis Star, four men were 
ordained elders. After the laying on of hands 
prayer was offered, during which a white dove 
flew in at the open door of the church vesti- 
bule, and alighted on the open pulpit Bible. 
From there it flew and rested on the heads of 
two of the candidates, next upon the head of 
the oldest member of the conference who was 
present, and then back to the Bible. In a 
few minutes it rose and rested upon the head 
of the Rev. A. W. Hall, an officer of the con- 
ference, and while the president, Rev. E. W. 
Bruce, was extending the right hand of fellow- 
ship to the men ordained, and speaking words 
of welcome, the dove alighted upon his head, 
and remained there till he was nearly through 
the ceremony, when it returned again to the 
Bible. The bird was a tame one, raised in 
the neighborhood, but had never been in the 
church before. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 77 

BIRD EMBLEM OF BENEDICTION 

A beautiful and touching sight, says the 
Sumpter (S. C.) Southron of some years since, 
marked the Sunday communion service at the 
Statesburg Episcopal church. A gentleman 
who was there, and saw it, says that while 
Governor Manning was kneeling at the chancel 
a little bird flew from the loft and lit upon his 
shoulder, and remained there till the governor 
rose, when it returned to its perch. 

BIRD EMBLEMS OF SPIRITUAL 
FREEDOM 

A writer in the Boston Transcript contrib- 
uted this unusual incident witnessed of a 
Sunday morning in the (New) Old South 
Church. 

The pastor, Dr. George Gordon, was preach- 
ing on the conscious prowess of a mighty soul, 
like Samson, that could break its bonds when 
trapped by enemies, and the compulsion 
that forced a young eagle from its nest to 
learn its marvelous power of flight, when a 
swallow darted from a niche in one of the pil- 
lars, and sweeping about over the heads of 
minister and people, seemed in the colored 
light of the great auditorium to be a symbol 
of an unresting spirit scorning its environ- 
ment on exhaustless wings. It flashed through 



78 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

the air from choir to altar, and back, and 
across and around, and as the eloquent 
preacher expounded his theme it mounted in 
higher circles, and at swifter speed. 
The sermon ended, and the hymn was read, 

"Like the eagle upward, onward 
Let my soul in faith be borne; 
Calmly gazing skyward, sunward 
Let my eye unshrinking turn," 

when the graceful creature, far up in the dome, 
paused, and clinging to the sill of a tinted win- 
dow, basked in the streaming glory as if it, 
too, had soared from its mortal surroundings 
into almost celestial light. 

EMBLEMS OF FREE COMMUNION 

Just after the communion table had been 
spread in the Episcopal cathedral of SS. Peter 
and Paul (Chicago), says a contemporary 
press item, two sparrows that had gained 
entrance to the church flew to the table, and, 
perched alongside the sacramental vessels, 
began to peck and eat the bread. They were 
driven away, but later made a second attempt 
to share the sacred feast. 

Innocent birds of God! The canons of 
ecclesiastical convention had not been part 
of their education. They were hungry, and 
perhaps hunted. David was hunted and 
hungry when he begged and ate the sacerdotal 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 79 

bread — and if the birds had read the Mas- 
ter's question, "Have ye never read what 
David did?" it would have made no differ- 
ence. The little open-communicants were 
excusable for mistaking the use of a food 
sacrament. 

BIRD EMBLEMS OF PATRIOTISM 

The Spectator describes the banner-bird of 
Guatemala as one of the beautifully plumed 
tribe of trogons in Central America and Mex- 
ico. The particular member of the tribe 
honored as the national emblem of Guate- 
mala seems to be similar (or the same) with 
the queletzu, before mentioned as once the 
favorite and sacred bird of the old Mexican 
emperors — a golden-green fowl with a globed 
feather crest and scarlet breast, having hackles 
flowing in cascades down its shoulders and 
long plumes falling over the tail. 

Other heraldic birds that appeal to popular 
faith or devotion as national ensigns are the 
peacock of Burma and the dove of New Gra- 
nada. Flying things of composite form like 
the double eagles of Russia and Austria, the 
winged lion of Venetia and Greece, and the 
winged dragon of China, are borrowings solely 
to picture the conventional idea of flight or 
speed. In the sky of nations the eagle of our 
patriotic adoption has its cognate bird in the 



80 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Prussian, Sicilian, and Mexican emblem. Loy- 
alty to country is kindled even by the image 
of the American eagle, and any spectacular 
incident of the original is sure to suggest some 
occult significance. The visit of the bird to 
President Garfield's house, mentioned in an 
earlier page, provoked meditation, as if a mes- 
sage had come to him from a Higher Power. 

BIRD EMBLEM OF LIBERTY 

An uncontradicted tradition connected with 
the return of Lafayette in 1824 to the United 
States asserts that a large eagle followed the 
course of the steamboat that bore our foreign 
"Knight of Liberty" to Mt. Vernon, and 
remained hovering in the air over the tomb 
of Washington till the famous visitor went 
away. Aged survivors of the army of Lib- 
erty could never have felt a deeper heart- 
stir than when they read the renewed record 
of mingled sorrow and victory on the wings of 
their tutelary bird at the moment Lafayette 
entered the guarded vault and wept over 
the coffin of their loved commander. To the 
old defenders the great general and his chival- 
rous confrere of France were inseparably linked 
in glory and suffering. The pomp of war was 
past, and memory flashed its light on many a 
single leader, 

" But the names it wrote dearest in triumph were twin." 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 8l 

There was a sublime pathos in the opportune 
arrival and homage of America's character- 
istic bird to America's friend in his sympa- 
thetic grief; and the pathos was profounder 
than the wild joy of Lafayette's welcome. 

" The band-bugles sang at his coming, and yonder 
From the shore as he bowed o'er the Patriot's bed 
The deep-rolling voice of the guns' muffled thunder 
Gave solemn "All hail" to the living and dead. 



But calm, as if love into vision had borne her 
With the soul he had cherished in friendship and trust, 
The eagle from heaven watched over the mourner 
As he knelt in the chamber of Washington's dust. 

All a country's proud story soared light on the pinions 
Of the sentinel bird in that consummate hour, 
And hailed at the door of the Mystic Dominions 
A future unmeasured in splendor and power. 

— T. B. in Youth's Companion. 

It would be small wonder if some enthusias- 
tic observers that day, mindful of the well- 
known longevity of the "Bird of Liberty," 
persuaded themselves that the noble fowl 
which followed Lafayette was one of the very 
eagles that had looked down on Mt. Vernon 
twenty-six years before, when the Father of 
his Country rode about his estate or sat on 
the veranda of his mansion gazing on the 
peaceful Potomac. 



82 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

"OLD ABE" 

Emblem of patriotism indeed, this bird 
belongs, however, to the story of his country 
in the sad days when disunion threatened. 
He followed the flag of one hostile army, but 
represented the martial spirit of two. 

The biography of "Old Abe," the soldier 
bird, celebrates a unique actor in the numerous 
roll of mascots and luck-wizards of the non- 
speaking races, that human faith or fancy 
makes company of. 

"Chief Sky," a Chippeway Indian, early 
in the year 1861, captured a young eagle in 
the wilds of North Wisconsin, and carried it 
home as a pet. It was "about as big as a 
hen," and covered with fluffy down. It grew 
rapidly, and a wealthy citizen, who saw and 
admired it, offered the Indian a round price. 
Chief Sky was poor, and he reluctantly sold 
the lusty mountain chicken. 

Later in the year the patriotic owner pre- 
sented the bird, now fully fledged, to the 
Eighth Wisconsin Regiment, and the officers 
"swore him in" for their first campaign, as 
a sort of guardian genius. 

The cohort with its feathered ensign became 
known as the "Eagle Regiment," and its noto- 
riety spread among the Confederates, until 
they meditated the capture of the Yankee 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 83 

luck-bird. The exploit was attempted, but 
never accomplished; and, perched like a stand- 
ard on a flag-staff, the eagle was carried 
through twenty engagements, serving to the 
end with never a wound on its body or a 
blemish on its soldierly character. The loving 
nickname of the great war president was won 
as a deserved honor to his fidelity and his cool 
bravery. In the heat of battle he would flap 
his wings and scream his war-cry, and the men 
felt that they owned the American Eagle itself 
in the body and spirit of their native mascot. 

At the close of the war the regiment pre- 
sented their favorite bird to the State, and 
the fame of the winged patriot made him an 
itinerant wonder at fairs and conventions and 
summer park animal shows, where the sale of 
his photograph netted thousands of dollars. 

The notion of cherishing dumb pets as 
prizes of fortune is a sort of superstition, but 
a pardonable one, and as amiable as it is 
ineradicable in human nature. A kind of 
gallantry — not to name a more Christian 
sentiment — towards dumb animals inspires it, 
and instinctive faith in their emblem character 
is a feature of national religion. To say the 
least, wherever their religion is a personal trait, 
one inferior fellow-creature is made sure of com- 
fortable food and lodging and gentle treatment. 



84 the birds of god 

Miscellaneous 

AN INJURED BIRD-MOTHER 

"Pleasant Hours" prints this moving 
record of a little songster's grief. 

A Newfoundland dog belonging to Mr. 
Webb, a sheep-farmer of Cambridgeshire 
(England), espied a nightingale's nest in a 
laurel bush in his master's grounds, and 
snapped at it. His jaws narrowly missed the 
parent bird, but seizing the young in his 
mouth he devoured the whole brood. Some 
time after, a visitor, dining at the house of 
Mr. Webb, heard the "jug, jug, jug" of a dis- 
tressed nightingale outside near the window, 
and asked what it meant. 

"Poor thing, she's taunting the house-dog," 
they told him, and related the story of the 
brute's cruel deed. Sure enough, there sat 
the dog just inside the door, and the nightin- 
gale, perching as near the house as she dared, 
was venting her reproaches on the destroyer 
of her babes. 

Ever since his attack on her nest she had 
followed him like an avenging spirit, the 
farmer said, denouncing him with her accusing 
cry whenever and wherever he was in sight, 
darting by him in the open field, alighting on 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 85 

a tree over his head, sitting at night on the 
top of his kennel, hopping after him up the 
front steps, or waiting outside till he came 
out. 

Some feeling of compunction may have 
touched "Pilot" (as the dog was named), for 
he never offered to molest her. Once the sor- 
rowful notes ceased, and the family thought 
the little mourner had gone, but suddenly, 
in the top of a tall birch across the lawn, they 
heard the wailing bird, and looking out, they 
saw " Pilot" passing under the tree. For a 
month, they declared, they always knew 
where " Pilot" was by the sound of that sad 
complaint. It was an affecting appeal to 
pity — the almost human sob of a bird, the 
grief of a winged Rachel, weeping broken- 
hearted for her children, and would not be 
comforted. 

THE ORIOLES AND THE PATRIARCH 

Bertha B. White, in one of her merry 
stories for children, reminds us that birds are 
home sharers with us in many beautiful ways. 

Two Baltimore orioles were busy making 
their pretty basket nest. For days they 
flew twittering about, gathering grasses, 
threads, and moss, and weaving them into 
their little swinging pocket cradle. When, just 
as something finer and nicer was wanted for 



86 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

the lining, they began to cast curious looks 
at the wide house portico almost directly 
under the elm tree. There sat an old man 
with handsome flowing beard as white as snow. 
It was grandpa fast asleep in his easy chair. 
The birds ventured nearer, and a little nearer, 
chirping and fluttering softly back and forth, 
till finally the more daring one flew to the 
chair and with a sly pluck and pull snatched 
a long white hair from the old man's whiskers 
and escaped with it into the tree. Grandpa 
was still very sound asleep. The little bor- 
rower came again, but just as it succeeded 
in plucking another trophy, Aunt Lucy spied 
him through the open window. The sight was 
so funny that she burst out laughing, and 
laughed so loudly that she scared the pretty 
rogue away, and waked grandpa up. 

She was so pleased that she clipped a few 
more of the same venerable white hairs, added 
a ringlet from granddaughter Mary's golden 
head, and a loan from her own glossy black 
locks, and spread them all on a bright cloth 
on the porch. Then the family waited and 
watched, out of sight, to see what the birds 
would do. In less than an hour every hair 
had been carried up to the nest. 

In the fall, when the orioles and their young 
had flown away, an active boy climbed the 
tree, and brought down the cunning relic. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 87 

Deftly twined into the lining of the wee cradle 
lay the black, the golden, and the snow-white 
hairs like blended colors in a flower cup. The 
nest is treasured like a love token in the fam- 
ily parlor, and every visitor hears its story. 

A BIRD'S STRANGE WAR-SONG 

In Moore's "Anecdotes of the Civil War" 
a curious footnote to one martial page shows 
how the passion of a great conflict affected a 
small spectator. 

In the hottest part of the battle of Resaca 
(North Georgia, May 15, 1864), a shell from 
the Union batteries soared screaming over 
into the enemy's lines. It passed over the 
spot where Generals Johnston and Polk were 
standing, and before exploding whistled half- 
a-dozen notes, clear as a fife, to the drum-like 
rattle of musketry. The din had nearly died 
when in the upper boughs of a tall pine a 
mocking-bird began to imitate the whistling 
of the shell. Neither the roar of cannon nor 
the rain of balls could drive the brave bird 
from its lofty perch. It sat above the battle- 
field like a little god of war, its blithe notes 
warbling over the din of arms. 

Patriotism, as it was understood on the dif- 
ferent sides, may have had its partisans among 
the creatures of the air. The native Southern 
bird sang a paean for its embattled fellow- 



88 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

countrymen. Mocking was its calling by 
birthright, and it was only a bird of its kind 
that could mimic the mutual taunting of the 
defiant Homeric heroes. 

A SPOILT MAGPIE 

Fortunately for the mocking-bird in the 
above anecdote, the tumult of battle did not 
(probably) continue long enough to pervert 
its education and prostitute its voice. 

One of Plutarch's stories tells of a magpie, 
belonging to a barber in Rome, which could 
imitate every sound or word that it heard. 
One day a troop of soldiers passed its master's 
shop, and the trumpeters blew their bugles, 
sounding the call, the charge, the retreat, 
and all the fanfares through every change and 
repetition in the military code. The magpie 
listened, and from that time remained silent 
for weeks, as if struck dumb. But the bird 
was simply studying. 

At length it woke suddenly from its long 
meditation, and astonished all its hearers by 
a mimic trumpet roulade that copied exactly 
all the flourishes and variations it had caught 
from the buglers in the street before the bar- 
ber's house. It was wonderful — but the mag- 
pie could do nothing else. The talking bird 
had forgotten all his old accomplishments, 
and could only toot like a horn. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 89 

How long would it take a warlike nation to 
unlearn the language of peace? 

A PEACE-MAKING GOOSE 

The Lutheran Evangelist notes this little 
farmyard incident. Wrapped up in the short 
passage are hints on several subjects, such 
as peaceableness, brotherly love, regard for 
authority, reverence for age, fair play, etc. 

While a flock of geese was quietly feeding, 
two young ganders suddenly fell to quarrel- 
ing over some choice morsel they had found. 
For a minute they continued to peck and flap 
each other furiously, till an old goose rushed 
towards them with wide-spread wings and 
loud chidings, and presently began to chas- 
tise them with her beak. The young fighters 
evidently understood her language, as they 
certainly did her more pointed applications, 
for they stopped their wrangling at once, 
whereupon all the rest of the geese gabbled 
their congratulations, and quiet and good 
order reigned again. 

A LITTLE TRUCE-BIRD 

An 1 88 1 November number of the Phila- 
delphia Press makes the apparition of a 
white sparrow at about that date an item of 
news, and an attractive text for moralizers. 



90 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

The star actor of the show is of a finer type 
than in the above farmyard episode, but the 
lines of suggestion are parallel. 

The neighborhood of Columbia Avenue and 
Twenty-second Street was much frequented 
by English sparrows, and these apparently 
haunted separate feeding-grounds, the two 
clans of twenty or thirty each flocking by 
themselves on opposite sides of Montgomery 
Avenue. Whether some old family feud or 
other cause created the division, it was a fact 
that each flock kept its own territory as a 
rule, and if transgressors disregarded the line 
there was sure to be a fight. 

It must have been a sensational surprise 
to the little Philistines when a snow-white 
sparrow lit among them, and found single 
pairs or squads of the opposite coveys in sharp 
combat. But the miracle was in the sequel 
of the white stranger's arrival. Instead of 
pecking and chasing the newcomer, true to 
their reputation, their manner of reception 
indicated respect, or shy welcome, that soon 
grew to friendly acquaintance. And from 
the day that the gentle visitor came they 
ceased to fight. More remarkable still, the 
two unfriendly clans flew together in sign of 
mutual truce, which seemed to strengthen 
in time to a treaty of amity and peace. The 
pretty albino had dropped into inflammable 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 91 

company, and cooled it. It was as if a snow- 
flake had floated down from the sky, and 
quenched a lighted powder fuse. 

The spirit of the peace-making bird is the 
same everywhere in its inspiration, its fea- 
tures, and its function. Whether on feet or 
wings, it hastens to settle strife and estab- 
lish harmony. Like Abraham between Lot's 
herdsmen and his own; like Jesus between the 
Jews and Samaritans, it lifts the white flag, 
and says, "Be still." 

CHARITABLE ROBINS 

The Utica (O.) Observer says that a family 
in Remsen, Oneida County, had a crow- 
blackbird in a cage, which they hung outside 
of the house to give the privilege of light and 
air to the prisoner. In spite of this considerate 
attention the blackbird did not seem to enjoy 
himself. Freedom to fly or run would have 
been preferable to being hung up and looked 
at, and not always by friendly eyes — for a 
crow-blackbird has an unhappy reputation, 
owing to his too frequent practise of eating 
his neighbor's eggs, and even their young 
ones. The forlorn fellow in the cage had 
reason to expect severe neglect, or indignant, 
if not vengeful, notice, which was worse; for 
the winged fathers and mothers, robbed by his 



92 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

pirate appetite, felt anything but kindness for 
him. Every day some sufferer that remem- 
bered his wrong-doing flew or perched near 
the cage, with angry or reproachful cries. 
The robins, like the rest, had their grievances, 
and eyed the outcast askance or accused him 
with mournful notes. But after a time 
their manner changed. They saw their old 
enemy, a helpless captive, and in pity they 
began to feed him. 

Whether it was human teaching or divinely 
given instinct that suggested Christ's Golden 
Commandment to the robins, the reader can 
make his own conclusion. 

FRIGHT TURNED A BIRD GRAY 

The near relation to us of our winged fellow- 
creatures is emphasized in what has been 
before told of bird sensibility, or mental suffer- 
ing (to give it a convenient name). Further, 
human similarity seems predicable of the 
feathered races in the external effect upon 
them of sudden terror. In their physical 
or functional constitution they appear, like 
us, subject to visible and abnormal changes 
under violent stress, and they imitate our 
scars and show the living marks of nervous 
convulsion or paralysis. 

We learned from the American Stock-keeper 
in an October number for 1910, that a shock 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 93 

which turns the dark hair of a man or woman 
white in a single night may produce a cor- 
responding effect upon a fowl. A man in 
Portsmouth (R. I.) had a chicken — a " Rhode 
Island Red" — which was raised in the 
house, and became a pet. Always under foot 
after it grew too large for the house, it was 
placed by the farmer's wife with the younger 
chickens under the barn. One night some- 
thing carried off all the young chicks. When 
the farmer's wife opened the door in the 
morning she fqund the one survivor, her 
cosset bird, "crazy as a loon." The little 
hen continued to act crazy, and would not 
come near any one for days. At length it 
tamed down to normal condition, but carried 
the indelible mark of that night's terrible 
scare. Down the whole length of its back ran 
a stripe of feathers that had turned from red to 
snow-white, and stood on end, "like quills upon 
the fretful porcupine." And in that strange 
dress Biddy grew up to mature fowlhood. 

Possibly the early household intimacy of 
the creature had accented its human suscepti- 
bility, till its nerves took the human habit; 
but however this may be, the hen bore "the 
outward testimony of its inward experience" 
as long as it lived. 



94 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

A MISSIONARY BIRD 

On the Island of Apaiang, one of the Kings- 
mill group of the South Pacific, a young mis- 
sionary and his wife from South Carolina 
located and began their labors. In a few- 
years the health of the wife so seriously de- 
clined that preparations were made to convey 
her back to her native land, but it was too 
late. Burying her under the cocoa trees, the 
lonely man, with his little daughter and a 
tiny native bird that had been her mother's 
pet, returned to the States, and made a home 
on one of the headlands of the Atlantic Coast. 
Owing to the dangerous reefs near that local- 
ity a beacon had been erected on the bluff, 
and the building and tower had long been 
known as " Grandma Maxwell's Lighthouse." 
The gray-haired lady who lived in that roman- 
tic dwelling was the mother of the deceased 
missionary, and it was she who welcomed the 
island-born child and her bird. 

The little creature was one of the finch 
family, resembling its famous cousins, the 
canaries, in size, beauty, song, and intelligence. 
Su-ee (as the Micronesians had called the 
little girl) named her pet "Appy-Yang," after 
her native island; and the small favorite seemed 
almost able to talk, and could understand 
like the best learned dog. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 95 

"Sing loud, Appy" — "Sing soft" — 
"Sing fast" — "Sing slow," Su-ee would 
say, and these and many more difficult com- 
mands of its child mistress were obeyed by 
the bird as soon as spoken; and it was a charm- 
ing picture to see its management when 
directed to "carry this thread to grandma," 
or to "take off grandma's spectacles," and its 
cunning tips and turns of head and neck at 
the window when told to "Look out and see 
if there's a ship coming." 

Naturally such an interesting bird would 
not remain long unnoticed by friends and 
neighbors, and winter and summer boarders, 
and visitors from a distance heard of the 
South Sea warbler at Grandma Maxwell's 
Lighthouse, and made excursions there to 
witness its pretty ways and listen to its music. 

But the knowledge that little Appy- Yang 
was a missionary bird became even more 
important than its other attractions, and well- 
to-do people, touched by its tender history, 
left offerings for its sake. Grandma Maxwell 
kept these sums of money sacred, in memory 
of her daughter's sacrifice. Sometimes they 
amounted to #150 a year. 

The time came when the missionary board 
could afford to fit out the "Morning Star" 
for two annual trips to the Micronesian Islands. 
Its arrival there only once a year had really 



96 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

caused the death of the young missionary's 
wife, for, weakened by the climate, she could 
not maintain life and health so long on the 
native foods. The loving accumulations of 
the venerable woman at the lighthouse went 
to the aid of the supply ship on its double 
voyage. 

Other hearts than hers thanked God for the 
fund earned by the little bird. 

A PIGEON'S TASTE IN MUSIC 

Animals show preference and selection as 
often as we do, but it is not so often that we 
can credit such faculties to intellect. 

It is related by John Lockman that at a 
friend's house he noticed a pigeon sitting in 
the open window while a young lady played 
the song of "Speri-si" in Handel's opera of 
"Admetus." The family assured him that 
this bird always flew down to listen to that 
song, but paid no attention to any other mel- 
ody. The pigeon seemed charmed, and ex- 
hibited emotion through the rendering of the 
music, flying back to the dove-house as soon 
as it was done. 

"He will not return until I play it again," 
said the young lady, who was a fine performer, 
and could make almost any piece of music 
attractive. The experiment was tried, for 
the visitor's benefit, and proved the truth of 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 97 

her testimony. A long repertoire of selec- 
tions was played, but failed to draw the bird 
to the window, but she had no sooner struck 
the notes of "Speri-si" than down he came, 
and settled himself to enjoy the encore. 

"A SPARROW'S GOOD MORNING" 

Mr. James Buckham told me that in his 
belief there was a perpetual hunger in birds 
for the love and companionship of man; and 
his immediate text for his opinion was an 
English sparrow that appeared every morn- 
ing at the pantry window and "talked" with 
his wife. 

"It was not after food," said he, "for it 
was September, and the rarity with which it 
picked up a crumb thrown to it showed its 
well-fed condition. But it knew by observa- 
tion when to expect the housewife in the pan- 
try, and always chose such times for his visits. 
It would sit on the sill, and give an interrog- 
atory chirp which said as plain as a bird could 
make it: "Good morning; how do you do to- 
day? I hope you are well," and my wife would 
chirp back to it, and the little neighbor would 
flutter its wings and hop back and forth and 
answer her with twitterings as full of grati- 
tude and affection as I ever heard. Often 
the whole household stood, a pleased and 
smiling audience, outside the pantry door. 



98 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

GALLANT BRAVERY OF WILD GEESE 

A correspondent of the San Francisco 
Call notes an interesting incident of a wild- 
goose flight on its way south. 

Their airy travel was in the usual arrow- 
head formation, and as the observer watched 
them he discovered a large black eagle making 
towards the flock in a course that would carry 
him a little below them. The geese knew 
their enemy, and did not wait for the apparent 
strategy of the predatory bird, but instantly, 
as he came underneath, broke their line into 
two perpendicular hollow squares and pounced 
down upon the eagle. The heavy rush com- 
pletely demoralized the fierce "king" of birds, 
and whatever his intentions had been towards 
the geese, he suddenly turned tail, and flew 
back to the north. The interrupted flock 
then resumed their arrow-shaped formation 
and continued their journey towards the 
Central American valleys. 

HIGHWAYS AND BEACONS OF BIRDS 

Much that birds of passage know and do 
is still a mystery. But if imagination can- 
not explain, it takes notice; and observation 
does the best it can. Theory has made va- 
rious suggestions as to what determines the 
choice of birds in selecting their ethereal 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 99 

turnpikes between latitude and latitude, what 
shift they make in the night for street lamps, 
what helps they may have for "dead-reckon- 
ing," etc. 

The French ornithologist, Dr. Gromier, 
tells us that the migratory birds of his coun- 
try have two atmospheric highways generally 
chosen on their flight to Africa; one over the 
Pyrenees, and one over the Alps. Each divi- 
sion selects its course according to the supply 
of food expected at their resting-places on the 
way; the bullfinches, e.g., following the hill 
ranges, the blackbird the vineyard belts, 
while some keep closer to the shore lines and 
water-courses. Similar conditions of prefer- 
ence no doubt determine the track of Amer- 
ican passage-birds. As to their means of 
guidance when they fly, the St. Louis Repub- 
lic offers a guess. 

"It has been proven that on clear nights 
they often wing their flight three miles above 
the earth's surface, where, of course, they 
can have nothing to direct them in the topog- 
raphy of the land so far below. Science 
has ventured to say they are guided by the 
stars." 

Without forgetting our usual reference to 
the "blind instinct" implanted in them by 
the Creator, we can entertain the thought 
of an intelligence, as sublime as our own, 



IOO THE BIRDS OF GOD 

which, earlier than man knew it, learned from 
the same Divine Power the lights "around 
the glowing Pole," and utilized them as lamps 
on their lofty road. Maybe the sailors of the 
air not only antedated the sailors of the sea, 
but anticipated the mariner's compass. 

Emerson's way of putting a fact under a 
mystery was characteristic when he closed a 
protracted argument with a skeptic. "Sir, 
I hold that God, who keeps His word with the 
birds and fishes in all their migratory instinct, 
will keep his word with man." And Bryant 
in his "Lines to a Waterfowl" points the same 
lesson: 

" He who from zone to zone 
Guides thro* the boundless sky thy certain flight 
In the long way that I must tread alone 
Will guide my steps aright." 

BIRD TRIPS BY EXPRESS 

Henglis, Roh, and Hedinborg, the North- 
ern ornithologists, believed that many small 
birds of the vacation-seeking kinds take their 
autumnal and vernal trips on the backs of 
birds of larger size and wing. Since their day 
this belief seems to be borne out by testified 
facts. 

Dr. Van Lennep, many years a missionary 
in Syria, confirms this theory of borrowed 
flight, as though he had witnessed it himself. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES IOI 

His testimony, as quoted in Nature, instances 
the smaller birds — (excepting the swallow), 
too weak of wing to fly the southern jour- 
ney or back again — as being kindly accom- 
modated with conveyance by the big bi-plane 
aviators. The little fellows travel by stork 
express. "From the North with the first 
cold blast of autumn," says Dr. Van Lennep, 
"these great birds are seen in flocks, flying 
low, and hundreds of thrushes, finches, orto- 
lans, darnagas, wrens, titmouses, and many 
other diminutive species, have repeatedly 
been discovered flying up to them, and set- 
tling comfortably on their backs; where their 
twittering songs are distinctly heard as their 
carriers sail away." 

We can take off our hats to the stork and 
cranes. If any one wants to discuss again the 
mutual benevolence of God's winged crea- 
tures, here is an example that needs no 
words. 

BIRD PUNISHMENT OF BURGLARY 
AND TRESPASS 

Birds have a sense of justice, but no regu- 
lar police system or general penal code. Their 
method of dealing with abuse or piracy of their 
rights is apt to be extempore, and often truly 
Spartan. 

The story is old of the pair of swallows 



102 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

that walled up with mud the door of their 
little house, when a saucy sparrow invaded 
their home and would not be driven out. 
And the intruder was left hermetically sealed 
inside, to repent of his wrong-doing at leisure. 
Per contra is a like story of "The Bun- 
ting's Egg," where two sparrows were the 
injured party. One day the hen-bird, return- 
ing to her nest after a brief absence, found 
that a cow-bunting had laid an egg in it beside 
the single egg of her own which it contained! 
The obvious procedure in any such case would 
be the summary ejection of the contraband 
article from the nest, but for some reason 
neither of the proprietors liked to handle the 
deposit of the lawless stranger. Perhaps by 
some superstition or race prejudice they came 
to think that the thing was "hoodoo" — and 
worse than all — that it had tainted the 
native egg. At any rate they concluded to 
sacrifice their own treasure rather than touch 
it or its smuggled bedfellow. Together they 
went to work and built a second story over 
the old nest, imprisoning the unhatched bun- 
ting and sparrow egg in the same cul-de-sac. 
The curiosity is still seen in the Museum at 
Salem, Mass. 

More than once a bone of contention or 
germ of jealousy has been the "bunting's 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 103 

egg" forced into a human family — and not 
always disposed of so quickly and quietly. 
Burial is the best remedy for many things. 

THE PROVIDENT WOODPECKER 

The ant "provideth her meat in summer 
and gathereth her food in harvest"; and 
there are birds which build no barns, but 
make a storehouse of Nature. The wood- 
pecker drills a hole in a tree, and sticks a nut 
into it. He cares nothing for nuts, but his 
learning, inherited from centuries of ancestry, 
tells him that when a nut rots a grub finds 
it and fattens on its kernel. In the winter 
the woodpecker finds the grub. 

Science has not yet mastered a method of 
cooking that turns out live meat. 

THE BELFRY PIGEON 

N. P. Willis' poem takes account of only 
one, forgetting or ignoring its mate. But 
the generic singular is more convenient, since 
he is merely presenting a bird as a type of an 
unruffled spirit. 

"Whatever tale in the bell is heard, 
He broods in his folded nest unstirred. 



Thy lot, like mine, is cast with man, 

And daily with unwilling feet 

I tread, like thee, the crowded street, 



104 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

But, unlike me, when Day is o'er, 
Thou canst dismiss the world, and soar, 
Or, at a half-felt wish for rest, 
Canst smooth the feathers on thy breast, 
And drop forgetful to thy nest." 



ASLEEP ON THE TELEGRAPH WIRE 

With more affluent imagination and 
breadth of contrast, Susan Coolidge, in her 
poem "On the Wires," illustrates the immu- 
nities of the feathered races. The situation 
strikingly portrays their exemption from the 
complex strain of human effort and motive, 
their freedom from the distractions of social 
and political fortune, and the wild extremes 
of human emotion and inordinate sensibility. 
The writer represents herself as walking over 
a lovely hill at sunset, and hearing voices. 
They came from the telegraph wires overhead 
— sweet notes that mingle with the solemn 
thrill of the iron chords. They sound like 
the singing of happy hearts at vespers in 
some airy choir. The sun sinks, and they 
cease. Then the poet hears through the 
silence a sigh of sadness along the wires; then 
a wail of pain; then a discord of convivial or 
sardonic laughter. The folly and grief of a 
whole nation are racing in tidings over the 
tell-tale line. Where are the happy hearts, 
and their sweet music? She looked up. 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 105 

— "In the dusk above my head 

One and another tiny shape 

I saw — a row of sleeping things 

With heads safe tucked beneath their wings. 

Yes, there they perched in downy rest 
All peacefully and hushed and still, 
While vast beneath each feathered breast 
Pulsed the quick throb of human ill — 
The laugh of joy, the wail of wo, 
And not a bird awake to know." 

A bird on its roost was always an interest- 
ing sight to the great Martin Luther. "This 
little fellow has gone to sleep," he would say, 
"without a care for tomorrow, calmly hold- 
ing by his twig, and leaving God alone to think 
of him." 

BIRDS IN A GONG 

An example of peace in tumult that sur- 
passes most others of its class was reported 
of two sparrows that built their nest and 
raised their young in the great gong that 
signaled the trains in a railway depot. 

Possibly the sparrows of 1880 were deafer 
or had more auricular adaptability than their 
ancestors, for the story comes from Williams- 
port, Pa., at that date. 

The whang of the awful sounder, eighteen 
inches in circumference, and "in full cry" 
half the time, would have stunned a man, 
if not an ox, but the little creatures never 



106 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

turned a feather in the midst of its racket, 
and the roar of the engines and cars. Indeed, 
the male bird was frequently seen sitting on 
the iron hammer while it was striking. 

A once well-known editor who declared he 
could write a leader in the street as well as 
anywhere else was the only exception we 
know to the human thousands who envy in 
vain such a gift of supreme abstraction and 
endurance. 

BIRDS THAT CALM THE SEA 

Who has not coveted the uniform composure 
and dominant magnetism of some strong fellow- 
being whose presence and manner could bring 
order out of disaster and quiet a crazy crowd ? 

A Fiji correspondent of an English paper 
found a metaphor of such a person in the sea- 
birds of the South Pacific. "I have passed 
flocks of terns and 'whale-birds/' 5 he says, 
"sitting and apparently living on the water 
in vast numbers. And it is remarked that, 
however rough the waves may be at the time, 
the spot or section where they happen to be 
resting is never disturbed by a ripple." l 

1 The beautiful fancy of the halcyon days " may 
have no original connection with the mythic halcyon, 
but the above sea-anecdote suggests a related thought of 
the possible power of certain birds to modify the moods 
and tenses of nature. The nesting-time of the king- 






WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 107 

"Oil on the troubled waters" is probably 
the right quotation here. Providence fur- 
nishes the birds with plenty of it. There are 
human beings, too, who carry more oil than 
dynamite in their constitution. 

BIRDS AND PRACTICAL JOKES 

Some casuist may ask if it is a sin to lie to 
a bird. Aside from that question, he who 
does so soon spoils his own sport. 

A thrush and his mate built a nest in a 
quarry. When the miners began to blast, 
some pieces of rock fell near their little home, 
exciting the birds considerably at first, and as 
the explosions caused frequent dodging and 
ducking of heads they could not help feeling 
a sense of insecurity. But in time they no- 
ticed that the workmen rang a bell and ran 
away whenever a blast was ready to go off, 
and after hearing this they always waited for 
the bell before they sought safety. 

fisher (halcyon) was supposed by the ancient Greeks to 
be at about the time of the winter solstice, and their 
imaginary reason for it was that this bird (considered by 
them as a water-brooder) found the ocean uncommonly 
calm during the fortnight, or seven days before and 
seven days after the solstitial day. The term "halcyon 
days " came later to designate the lingering autumnal 
quiet of " St. Martin's summer." The singular balmy 
days of New England's second week in December, 191 1, 
seemed like a return of the old Greek sea-fable; but 
such instances are exceedingly rare. 



108 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Visitors heard of the bird-and-bell perform- 
ance, and wanted to see it in operation, and 
the miners, to please them, rang the alarm 
out of time. For a while the deception suc- 
ceeded, and the spectators had their laugh; 
but the thrushes, after furnishing fun in this 
way a few times, learned the ruse, and ceased 
to mind the bell unless the men ran away 
when it rang, But to run for sham warnings, 
just to please others' curiosity, was too much to 
expect of the miners very long, and the birds 
had no more spectators for mere sport's sake. 

The winged creatures can "see through," 
but do not retaliate, deceit. If rational beings 
were as ingenious to detect a practical joke 
as they are to fool each other, there would be 
less silly victories that end in quarrels. 

LITTLE FEATHERED WARRIORS 

A writer in the Buffalo Express remarks 
that the combative and driving force of birds 
increases in exact ratio with their dimi- 
nution in size. The crow chases the hawk, 
the kingbird the crow, the sparrow the king- 
bird, and the humming-bird the sparrow — 
(and the humming-bird is said to be the 
only bird the English sparrow is afraid of). 
Stories of this tiny creature's prowess make 
us think of Joshua's poetic augury in his fare- 
well address to his nation: "One of you shall 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 109 

put a thousand to flight." A contributor to 
Science saw one drive away a wren and a 
larger bird, breaking up a quarrel between 
them. Tired of the noise they were making, 
the indignant mite hazed the wren into a 
pile of brush, and scared him till he crept out 
of sight. Another writer testifies to seeing a 
single ruby-throat disperse a covey of spar- 
rows that were chattering too loudly and too 
near a bed of flowers in which he was busy. 

The hummer of Jamaica, called "the doc- 
tor's bird," says the same witness, is the 
fiercest fighter in protection of its young. 
"Once, after infinite pains, I tracked a pair 
to their resting-place, and had climbed their 
tree, when suddenly both the hummers darted 
at my face. Fortunately I wore spectacles, 
or they might have put out my eyes. As it 
was they several times knocked my spectacles 
lopsided before I could escape." 

Birds of various kinds are defenders of 
other animals, and if not warlike enough to 
do battle for them, act as sentries and look- 
outs. The jacana (South America), in spite 
of its awkward feet, watches the poultry, 
keeps the hawks away, and escorts its pro- 
teges home at night. In the Shetland Islands 
there is a species of gull which defends the 
sheep and lambs from the eagles; and the 
chamois bounding over the mountains are 



IIO THE BIRDS OF GOD 

indebted in no small degree for their safety 
to the Alpine pheasant. It detects danger 
far away, and whistles, meaning "the hunters 
are coming!" and the timid beasts vanish to 
covert at once. 

POLITE BIRDS (Webfoots) 

The elegant movements and charming 
manners of the swan in his own flock are some- 
times taken (perhaps mistaken) for courtesy; 
but the swan could not help being graceful 
and gallant-looking on the water, whether 
such appearance is part of good manners or 
not. The banner bird for politeness, according 
to Lieutenant Shackleton, is the Antarctic 
penguin. In fact, in his book, "The Heart of 
the Antarctic," he credits the curious creature 
with a sort of civilization. 

Long ago the penguins (in the North) sitting 
together on the cliffs struck the first explorers 
by their odd resemblance to human beings. 
Ranked side by side with their snowy breasts, 
they looked to the sailors like rows of little 
girls in white aprons. The fact that they 
walk erect intensifies the likeness, and sitting 
or standing in their case amounts to about 
the same thing, for their center of gravity on 
land can only be maintained in a perpendicular 
position. A boy coaster would laugh at their 
waddling walk, but would lag behind badly 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES III 

beaten or upset if he tried to toboggan down 
hill with a penguin; and a crack swimmer or 
diver would feel himself a stranger among a 
lot of them in the water. 

But these favorite activities do not exhibit 
the penguins (at least the South Pole species) 
at their best and finest. In society their 
deportment would give points to a French- 
man in accomplished gentility and breeding. 
When assembled for business or counsel, or an 
ordinary parlez-vous, they carry on animated 
conversations, bowing, ceremoniously to each 
other, with little halts in their goose-and- 
gander dialect like low questions and answers, 
the "emperor" penguin always beginning the 
talk and setting the example. 

It is the same when a man or even a dog 
approaches, the bird saluting the stranger with 
an obeisance and address, with his beak 
dropped on his breast, and after a pause, if he 
does not seem to be understood, he lifts his 
head and moves it in a half circle, and then 
tries again. If the leading speaker fails to 
make an impression another will shuffle for- 
ward and repeat the modest bow and salute, 
evidently determined to assure their polite 
intentions. 

Perhaps we ought to note here the tribute 
of a letter writer from London, Ontario, to 
the behavior of a bird that does not belong to 



112 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

the webfoot family. The good manners and 
admirable propriety of a robin present at 
the Methodist church one September Sunday 
earned him a premium for politeness, if not 
praise for some higher traits. 

Perched on the railing opposite the minister, 
says the correspondent who was an eye-witness, 
the bird sang clear and loud when the people 
sang, kept perfectly silent during the prayer, 
chirped gently at times during the sermon, 
as if in "amen" to its good points, tuned his 
glad echo to the doxology, and — best of all — 
observed the decorum of the place and occa- 
sion by remaining till the congregation was 
dismissed with the benediction. 

A BIRD CHARITY-BOARDER 

A Harold Skimpole in the tribes of 
feathered nature is something of a variety, 
but our winged fellow creatures show a ten- 
dency, more or less, to box the entire compass 
of human character and habit in one way or 
another. The charity-boarder type may some- 
times be the result of another variety — a 
nestless bird that borrows a neighbor's cradle 
and leaves an orphaned egg. 

St. Nicholas tells the story of Dick, the 
cow-bird that was born a pensioner of that 
sort. He came to life in a hair-bird's or 
"chipping sparrow's" nest, and ate so much 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 113 

that he starved out her own brood, till the 
poor deluded chippy had only the little glutton 
left. He followed her, and she fed him, and 
tried to teach him how to catch insects, and 
pick up suitable food; but the task wore upon 
her, and she disappeared. The lazy youngster 
found that shifting for himself brought in too 
scanty forage for his appetite, and one day he 
boldly flew into a houseyard and begged. 
A little girl — the baby of the family — came 
out to feed her chickens, and flung him some 
bits of dough. After that he was sure to be 
on hand at breakfast time and every other 
time when food was to be had without working 
for it. He grew fat, and spent his time around 
the back door or roosting in the peach-tree. 
The "baby" grew fond of him and named him 
"Dick," and he soon ingratiated himself so 
securely with the whole household that he be- 
came a family pet. His benefactors humored 
him when he hopped into the bread pan and 
stayed there till he filled his crop, and laughed 
when he pretended to run races with the 
toddling little girl. 

Poor Dick! At a fatal moment a neigh- 
bor's fox terrier pounced upon him in the 
yard, and killed him. 

Perhaps there is no moral to this cow-bunting 
story. But something more than poacher an- 



114 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

cestry must excuse a creature with two hands 
for making himself a mere cosset and sponging 
his living out of others' good nature. 

A MIRACLE ON WINGS 

A sojourner in Florida pays his fervent 
respects to the turkey-buzzard — a bird that 
has had more toleration than praise. With 
nothing to admire in his shaggy and decollete 
"personnel" or his foul-feeding habits, this 
black scavenger is a peerless genius in aerial 
locomotion — a past-master in the art of 
flying. Once seen afloat on the air, says the 
rapt observer, one no longer quotes the swan 
on the water as the chief exponent of the 
poetry of motion. In the still poise of the 
hawk, eagle, condor, lammergeyer, or albatross 
there will be detected now and then the gentle 
dip or tilt or slight fluctuation of the great 
pinions that betrays how the currents or the 
varying density of the atmosphere are caught 
and utilized to move the bird from place to 
place, but the buzzard in his habit of wing, 
so far as one can see, uses no motive power but 
his own will. He sails along his invisible 
pathway with never a flap or quiver in the 
tips of his expanded quills, and rides on them, 
as if on the magical "carpet" of King Solomon, 
with no impulse or guide but a silent wish 
or the power of the fabled Aladdin to think 



WINGED FELLOW CREATURES 115 

himself to and fro through the sky. Other 
birds fly and you see the effort, and the beauty 
more or less. In the buzzard's flight you see 
only beauty. As the Chinaman at first sight 
of an electric car remarked, "there's no pullee 
or pushee" to the winged wonder. 

The wisest man could not understand "the 
way of an eagle in the air." None but the 
Creator knows the secret of the transfigured 
buzzard — a plebeian on the ground, a prince 
and a poet above it. 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 

"Every little brown bird which doth sing 
Hath something greater than itself, and bears 
A living word to every living thing, 
Albeit it holds the message unawares." 

"The martins and the swallows 
Are God Almighty's scholars. 
The robins and the wrens 
Are God Almighty's friends. 
The laverock and the lintie, 
The robin and the wren, 
If you disturb their nests 
You'll never thrive again." 

— English Folk Song. 

This section of anecdotes treats of both the 
innocent trust noted in many wild birds 
at their first meeting with man, and the 
same feeling created by human kindness — 
as in the case (before quoted) of the swans, 
etc., on the estate of Canon Farrar's country 
friends; and those belonging to the ancient 
palace domains of the Bishop of Wells. 1 

1 These birds, tradition says, were regular members, or 
retainers, of the Bishop's household, and their habitat was 
the wide moat of the palace or castle. A pendant rope 
from the servants' quarters was attached to a bell, and the 
swans, when hungry, could seize the end of it and ring for 
food. 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 117 

THE ISLAND BIRDS 

Professor James D. Dana of Yale, the 
eminent geologist, used to tell his successive 
classes of his visit to the unsettled islands of 
the South Pacific. Untrodden before by 
human feet, they were thronged by winged 
inhabitants, and he called them "little bird- 
worlds." The birds met him with gentle 
curiosity, but with perfect confidence. He 
related how on the green sea-girt reef where 
he made their acquaintance, he walked among 
the beautiful white strangers, disturbing them 
even less than would a peaceful farmer among 
his flock of fowls, and stroked their graceful 
necks and downy heads as if they were pets 
of his family. He even said he could pick 
the smaller ones off the trees like live fruit. 

It was an opportunity, and the instinct of 
the scientist strongly tempted him. He wanted 
one of those lovely skins to stuff for his museum. 
Selecting a handsome bird, he took out his 
knife and pressed its keen point into its neck, 
and a drop of blood stained the snowy plumes. 
The innocent creature turned its head, and 
looked into the great naturalist's eyes with 
an almost human gaze of wonder and appeal. 
Professor Dana put away his knife. He had 
wounded a friend. A fountain of pity and 
love was opened in the good man's soul, and 



118 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

he turned away and left those sinless creatures 
of God on the beach. 

ANOTHER BIRD-WORLD 

Battledore Island is a paradise of Nature. 
But it is one of the happy spots of creation, 
kept so not because man has let it alone, but 
because good men protect it from bad men. 
But for that protection the unfeeling spoilers 
who feed cupidity and fashion would soon 
make the little atoll on the sea anything but 
a paradise. 

The Breton Island-Reservation of the Na- 
tional Audubon Society has its sentinel there 
to watch, with his schooner, The Laughing 
Gull, and no enemy can come to round up 
victims for profitable sport and decorative 
vanity. By favor of the society an artist, 
Mr. Herbert K. Job, visited the islands of the 
Reservation in 1909, and wrote in Harper's 
Monthly his impressions of the bird metropolis 
on Battledore. He found terns, skimmers, 
gulls, herons, and other tribes — a peaceful 
nation of many breeds — as tame to man as 
domestic fowls. They knew no representative 
of the human race but the gentle watchmen 
on the sentry ship, and these had never dis- 
illusionized them of their native unsophisticated 
faith in strangers. 

A visitor could stand close at hand and 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 119 

admire their beautiful movements, and with 
his camera fix sketches of their free and happy- 
life on his sun-plates, or he could walk among 
their innumerable nests on the sand, the grass, 
or in the mangroves of the shore without 
fluttering a feather of the trusting brooders, 
or encountering sound or sign of warning or 
unfriendly interference from their flying mates. 

The artist stopped at the other islands 
settled by colonies of wild birds in less numbers, 
but the same joyful freedom was there, and 
the same simple confidence. "Wild" never 
means timid where suspicion sleeps, and the 
cruelties that create it are unknown. 

Generous humanity cannot help too much 
a society and cause whose work has guarded, 
and still guards, the rights of the winged chil- 
dren of Nature against an unfeeling fraction 
of mankind. 

THE BIRD AND THE PRISONER OF 
CHILLON 

Francois de Bonnivard of Switzerland, for 
his love of liberty, suffered in his country's 
cause a six years' imprisonment in the dungeon 
of Chillon Castle in the third decade of the 
sixteenth century. Heart-sick with disap- 
pointment and despair, and the first horror 
of his situation, his hair turned gray in a single 
night, but the noble political victim rallied, 



120 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

and endured an existence which was nothing 
but 

— Silence and a stirless breath 
Which neither was of life or death." 

Byron describes the effect upon him of a 
snatch of music heard through the little lancet- 
window of his cell. 

"A light broke in upon my brain — 
It was the carol of a bird; 
It ceased, and then it came again, 
The sweetest song ear ever heard, 
And mine was thankful till my eyes 
Ran over with a glad surprise, 
And they that moment could not see 
I was the mate of misery." 

Activity and purpose took the place of the 
"vile repose" in which he had lingered and 
languished; for the song of the little bird 
quickened his faculties, and in his hunger to 
do something Bonnivard attacked the walls 
of his dungeon. A bit of iron which he found 
supplied something like a tool, pitifully in- 
adequate as it was, and with incredible labor, 
and through uncounted days and weeks, he 
dug holes in the stone by which he could barely 
cling and climb. In this way he finally raised 
himself to the little window through which he 
could look out on the lake, the mountains, 
and the green of the glorious world — and 
see the eagles fly. The moment when the 
bird's song made him forget that he was "a 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 121 

mate of misery" was what lifted him to that 
window, and gave him a saving link between 
lost liberty and life. 

He was released at last, not a maniac but a 
man; and in many stations of honor, conferred 
upon him by a people who remembered his 
sufferings, he long served Switzerland as a 
champion of religious freedom. 

"I was in prison and ye visited me." The 
messenger who sings a song of hope into a 
helpless captive's window is one of God's 
saints. 

CANARY MADE A CHILD A MUSICIAN 

When Louis Spohr, the eminent composer, 
was four years old a heavy clap of thunder 
during a sudden summer shower so nearly 
stunned him that he sat on the floor, and stared 
before him, unable to utter a word. A minute 
after the terrifying peal the roof of dark cloud 
overhead split, and opened a crevice where a 
bit of sky looked through. A sunbeam darted 
across the room to a canary's cage, and the 
bird welcomed it, turning its head cunningly 
about and hopping happily from perch to 
perch, and finally burst into a joyous strain 
of song. It was not till then that the child's 
fright and stupor fell from him. He listened 
and drank in the bird's melody with passionate 
rapture. The sweet notes touched nerve and 



122 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

brain. In the revulsion of feeling the little 
boy's heart throbbed as music had never stirred 
it before. It leaped, and sang with the bird. 
Like the beam that opened the cloud, the 
canary's song had opened his world before him. 

THE CHILDREN'S STORK FRIEND 

The newest version of this oft-told story 
is probably the one in Our Animal Friends, 
recited with no important variations. The 
story is too good to be imaginary. 

On the chimney of a German house a stork 
built its nest, and became very tame and 
familiar with the children of the family. 
When the season came for the bird to fly south, 
the children tied to his leg a letter begging 
that the people in whatever place the stork 
chose to spend the winter would be kind to 
him, and send him back to them if possible. 
When spring came again, sure enough, the 
stork came with it to his old home — and, to 
the delighted surprise of the children and their 
parents, around his neck and fastened under 
his wing with a ribbon were letters from an 
African missionary to the little folks who 
wrote the message the bird had brought and 
thanks to the good people in Germany who had 
prompted it. The minister modestly sketched 
the story of his mission among the blacks, 
and its many needs. His address was given, 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 123 

and the family, touched by the story, and 
the way it came, forwarded to him a gener- 
ous consignment of necessities and a sum of 
money. 

This is said to have been the beginning of a 
lasting correspondence which became a boon 
of Providence to the missionary, as well as a 
spiritual blessing to his northern helpers so 
strangely found. 

BIRDS' FRIENDLY HINT 

A flock of small birds resembling parokeets 
alighted on a British brig under full sail in 
the South Pacific. The vessel was at such 
a distance from land that it was thought the 
little visitors must have been blown out to 
sea by some violent tropical wind, or scared 
by some foresight of a coming storm into 
hurried flight; but there were no warnings 
present in sky or sea, and when the birds 
disappeared, and after an hour returned and 
roosted over night in the maintop, and flew 
off and came back the following day, the crew 
began to wonder at their movements. They 
ate the crumbs the sailors threw to them, and 
once more vanished. 

That afternoon the same flock came again 
in terrified flight, and huddled behind the 
deck-house with plaintive cries or pipings, as 
if in dread of some pursuing enemy. The 



124 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

captain of the brig looked at his barometer, 
and finding sure indications of a coming storm, 
caused all preparations to be made for a battle 
with the winds and waves. In about twenty 
minutes the atmosphere turned the color of 
mud, and torrents of rain fell, though why no 
gale struck the ship was past understanding. 
After the storm the birds flew away and 
were seen no more. Not until they reached 
port two days later did the crew learn that a 
terrible cyclone had swept the ocean in that 
latitude. The brig had passed through the 
skirt of the tornado, or some cloud or water- 
spout flung across by its spreading fury. No 
peril to life had been actually encountered, 
but the superior alertness of the little winged 
natives of that dangerous zone had aided some- 
what to put their human friends in timely 
trim to face heavy weather. 

CHURCH ROBINS 

One pleasant Sunday morning in April the 
parish clerk of a church in Wiltshire, England, 
stood at his reading desk, turning to the 
"Morning Lesson" in the great Prayer Book. 
Something curious and unusual caught his 
eye, and made him slow to begin. Partly 
hidden under the Bible rack a little wisp of 
hay prompted him to investigate, and just 
beneath the slanting book-rest or lectern he 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 125 

discovered a robin redbreast's nest with two 
blue eggs in it. A missing pane in a gallery 
window explained the pretty invasion. Mrs. 
Redbreast and her mate had entered to make 
their little home where the sparrow and 
swallow did, as sung by the "Sons of Korah" 
in the Eighty-fourth Psalm. 

The clerk did not molest the nest, and no one 
thought of frightening the mother-bird when 
by and by she flew in. 

The little housekeepers remained there till 
the last of May, and became so tame that the 
coming and going of the worshipers, and the 
echoes of music and devotion did not disturb 
them at all. The mother would quietly brood 
her eggs, or sit with her fledglings while the 
clerk was reading just over her head, and the 
male would fly in with worms in his beak to 
feed his family during the Litany or the rector's 
sermon. This pleasing church partnership 
lasted till the young birds feathered and made 
their way into the world on their own wings. 

— T. B. in The Watchman. 

A NEST IN A BIBLE 

This fragment appears here unlocated and 
undated, but was originally clipped from Our 
Dumb Animals. It says pretty nearly the 
last word on the subject of bird familiarity 
and confidence — at least as a church story. 



126 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Into a meeting-house whose windows hap- 
pened to be open after service one warm Sun- 
day, came two tiny wood-birds hunting for a 
place to establish their home. For some queer 
reason the great open Bible on the pulpit took 
their fancy. Evidently a way of entrance, if 
not some forgotten window, must have let in 
the small builders afterwards, for they worked 
all the week, and next Sunday the minister 
was astonished to find a perfect bird's nest in 
the middle of his Bible. (Some larger institu- 
tions have been built on a poorer foundation.) 

The incident was so unique that the congre- 
gation agreed with the preacher to accept the 
situation, and let the little settlers be. For 
three or four weeks the preacher read out of 
his small Bible, and delivered his sermons at 
one side of the pulpit while the tiny mother 
attended to her domestic duties. At first she 
and her mate were a little timid at the sound 
of the singing, or when the minister's oratory 
happened to be unusually loud and swift, 
but they soon learned to accept everything 
with as little trouble as they gave. It was 
interesting to see how glad the children were 
to go to church during those weeks. 

The wee couple raised their family on the 
Bible, and flew away; but that the Sunday- 
school boys and girls missed them goes without 
saying. The memory and lesson of that "pro- 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 127 

tracted meeting" with their pretty feathered 
friends lasted them all their lives. 

GREAT GRATITUDE IN A LITTLE 
BREAST 

Parallel cases of a frightened bird chased 
by a hawk fleeing to human protection are so 
many that one has to resist a temptation to 
string them in a bead-roll of monotonous 
anecdotes. An instance like it is recorded 
of Charles Wesley's experience, and some have 
ascribed to it the origin of his sweetest hymn, 

"Jesus, lover of my soul, 
Let me to thy bosom fly." 

A lady living in Cincinnati heard a bird 
call as if in pain, and discovered in the door- 
way a humming-bird in the claws of the 
family cat. She rescued the little victim, 
fortunately before it had been seriously hurt. 
Carrying it into the house, she kept it until 
the next day and released it. But it flew back 
and lit upon her hand. It was not hard to 
make love to the feathered mite with its russet- 
gold plumage and its cunning coquettish ways 
— least of all to resist its evident gratitude, 
and invitations to friendship. The lady took 
charge of the little creature, and became the 
wonder of her friends as almost the only person 
who had ever succeeded in making a home pet 



128 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

of one of its kind. The tiny bird became 
devoted to its mistress, and in her hands en- 
joyed being stroked and kissed, and fed out 
of a fresh petunia on melted sugar. The sight 
of the gracious lady with her winged jewel on 
her finger taught many an observer one tender 
truth at least: that loving service can make 
the most timid tame. 

HOW THE SEA-GULL PAID HIM 

A poor woman living on the shore of the 
Morbihan sea (east of Cape St. Pierre, Brit- 
tany) found, one winter day, a sea-gull on the 
beach with a broken wing. She took it home, 
and she and her husband fed and tended it 
until it was cured. The bird flew away, but 
when the husband resumed his fisherman's 
trade in the spring a gull came to him, and 
lingering near the boat, seemed anxious to 
lure him out to sea. It came several times, 
and he believed it to be the same bird he had 
befriended, trying now in some way to befriend 
him. 

One day he followed it, and the sea-gull led 
him to some caves where millions of bats, 
undiscovered, had left the deposits of centuries. 
The poor fisherman brought them to market 
and became rich. 

The Breton peasants will have it that the 
world owes the discovery of guano, a fertilizer, 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 129 

now an annual commercial commodity of 
vast value, to a poor fisher's wife who healed 
a sea-gull's broken wing. Does "the world" 
remember the bird? 

CRUELTY AVENGED 

Some evidence survives that one ancient 
nation at least, punished with death a refusal 
to befriend a distressed bird. We are told 
that once when the Athenian Senate, in open- 
air session, were deliberating together, a song- 
bird chased by a falcon flew down to the 
bosom of one of the senators for protec- 
tion, but the man churlishly shrank from the 
little fugitive, and seized it by the neck and 
strangled it. 

His indignant colleagues, holding that the 
bird was a friend of the State, and a friend of 
mankind, denounced his barbarity as a capital 
crime, held a council, and made out an order 
that he should die himself. 

DOVE-NOTES AND THE PIRATE 

There can be no sublimer ministry of bird 
friendship than to lift a reckless outcast back 
to morality and righteousness. Is it strange 
to speak of a winged physician that restored 
a dying conscience? 

Says Audubon in his autobiography, "A 
man who was once a pirate assured me that 



130 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

several times, while idling on a sandy shore, 
the soft and melancholy sounds of some dove- 
notes awoke in his heart feelings that had 
long slumbered, melting him to penitence. 
So deeply was he moved by them — the only 
soothing sounds he had heard in all his career 
of horrors — that he was induced to escape 
from the pirate ship, abandon his turbulent 
companions, and return to a family that had 
long deplored his absence." 

At the time the great naturalist wrote the 
man was "living in peace among his friends. " 

BIRDS DEFEATED THE MONOPOLISTS 

No doubt Nature works with God to reward 
or punish men. Purblind selfishness moved 
the operators of the Dutch colonial settlements 
to crush all other parties engaged in nutmeg 
culture, and drive them out of the trade. 
Owning the Banda Islands, they limited the 
nut-raising business to the three or four 
reserved especially to their corporate profit, 
and not only cut down the trees of the pro- 
hibited trades, but seized and burned up at 
one time three piles of nutmegs, each "as big 
as a church," in order to boost the price of the 
product and keep it high. 

Nature did not sympathize with such waste- 
ful meanness. The nutmeg pigeons ate the 
fruit — which is their natural food — and 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 131 

dropped the kernels on all the Indian Islands 
and surrounding shores; and the trees grew 
again. 

A HEN PROVIDENCE 

We give the following story without com- 
ment. In a tenement house in Roxbury, says 
the Massachusetts Ploughman, lived a poor 
laborer, his sick wife, and two children. The 
doctor had told the woman she must have 
more nourishment, and prescribed "a fresh 
egg every morning." 

Even if she could afford the expense, how 
was the invalid to know if the egg she ate was a 
fresh one — as she had no poultry of her own? 
The prescription was reduced one half, but, still, 
compliance with it seemed next to impossible. 

The morning after the doctor ordered it the 
husband found just outside the door of the 
family apartment an egg, still warm, lying on 
the entry floor. It turned out that a hen had 
been seen hopping quietly down the stairway. 
The conclusion was that she had ascended to 
the second story, and left her gift where it 
would do the most good. This she continued 
to do every other morning for three weeks. 

THE BAMBOO BIRD 

It has been remarked that every nation 
which can boast of anything like a literature 



132 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

has some written acknowledgment of its 
obligation to birds, as auxiliary to its life 
and comfort. The Boston Commonwealth pro- 
cured the translation of a Japanese legend 
about the ta-kee bird. It is, at least, as likely 
that the story may have a real foundation as 
in other similar cases, or even more than 
among peoples and tribes that have only oral 
language. 

A little bird from the West (runs the legend) 
came and dropped a seed in the soil of the 
Tycoon's garden. The seed sprouted, and, 
being a novelty among the known plants, it 
was carefully watched and tended as it grew. 
The strange exotic proved to be a kind of 
reed, of singular strength and straightness, 
and it shot up higher and higher till it became 
a tree. The natives declared that they saw 
somewhere on its trunk two characters close 
together which resembled Chinese letters, and 
spelt the word "Ta-kee" — and Ta-kee both 
the bird and the tree have been ever since, 
though "bamboo" is the universal name 
throughout Christendom. And if there is 
anything non-metallic that the Japanese can- 
not make out of the bamboo w r ood it would 
be hard to name it. To them the tree is the 
gift of the gods. 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 133 

THE DOVES OF ST. MARK 

The church of St. Mark, built a.d., 813, was 
a thank-offering to God for a great victory- 
over the invading Franks under King Pepin 
in a.d., 809; and sixteen years later the dis- 
covery of the supposed remains of Mark, the 
holy Evangelist, and their removal and burial 
under the cathedral, gave it its name and 
enhanced its sacred reputation. The grand 
piazza or square in front of the church became 
since 877 (says Mr. William D. Howells in 
"Venetian Life") a natural and favorite resort 
for pigeons, and after the religious services on 
Palm Sunday it was anciently the custom of 
the sacristans to clip the wings of many of the 
birds that they might be caught by the poorer 
inhabitants and killed for food. The undis- 
abled ones that escaped took refuge under the 
roof, and in the lofts of the edifice their progeny 
increased to countless numbers. 

Through centuries, safe in their hallowed 
home, these bird-generations acquired a certain 
sacredness, and were fed by a provision at the 
Republic's expense. Neglected after the de- 
cline of the city, thousands of the once favored 
birds starved or scattered, but the piety of a 
faithful few among the people remembered and 
regretted them, and finally a bequest for their 
public care and maintenance, left at her death 



134 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

by a devout lady, the Countess Policrasto, 
established them permanently as one of the 
romantic attractions of the " Queen City of 
the Sea." 

A more poetic story of these winged saints 
of Venice relates that news of a victory over 
the Turks was brought by a pigeon to the 
palace of the Doge, and in gratitude his sov- 
ereign order decreed that all its descendants 
should be protected by the State. Mary A. 
Francis has celebrated this alleged episode of 
medieval history. 

"Hundreds of years have come and gone 
Since by the Doge Dandolo's order 
The tale of the Eastern scepter won 
Flew with the pigeon across the border, 
Yet Venice still links that oldtime glory 
To her newer glory that came to be, 
And this is the sweetest and tenderest story 
Told of the City beside the Sea, 
For there, by the will of the Doge long dead, 
The birds by thousands are daily fed." 

ST. FRANCIS AND THE BIRDS 

Who can tell how much, and by what secret 
divination, a wild bird knows of human temper 
and character — and will qualify its move- 
ments accordingly when approached by man, 
woman, or child? Birds make their own 
selection, and many of us could name one or 
another case in which they have recog- 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 135 

nized some magnetic attribute in a human 
being that made them seek and love his 
company. 

No example of this strange attraction is so 
widely notable as Giovanni Francesco (1182- 
1226), a merchant's son, born at Assisi in 
Umbria, Italy. Known to fame as St. Francis, 
founder of the monastic order of the Francis- 
cans, he in his youth surrendered his fortune, 
and chose a life of piety and poverty. 

From the first he developed a passionate 
love for the brute creation, and not only sheep 
and lambs, but rabbits and wilder animals 
would cluster fondly around him in the field. 
It was birds, however, that he especially loved, 
for they seemed to him less earthly than 
quadrupeds and creeping things. The story 
of the doves snared by a boy, and bought by 
him to initiate an aviary in his convent, and 
of the lark that brought her nestlings to him 
to be fed from his hand, and of the nightingale 
in whose company he sang in playful rivalry 
till he bowed in silence to its superior melody, 
are samples of ecclesiastical lore which make 
a literature by themselves around the real life 
and character of St. Francis of Assisi, and 
help to embalm his amiable memory. 

He believed in literally preaching the Gospel 
"to every creature," and one of the finest of 
the many pictures preserved of him in Chris- 



136 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

tian art is a beautiful fresco of the godly man 
preaching to the birds. 

The very exaggerations that throw a halo 
of miracle over his name grew into being 
because a remarkable man had lived whose 
humanity and catholicity of loving kindness 
had no model save in the love of the Son of 
Man himself. 

A LITTLE KING'S PLAYMATES 

"They learned to come at the gentle call 
Of the King who had neither crown nor throne, 
And the child kept court on the castle wall." 

Florence Tyler 

Louis XVII son of Louis XVI, born in 1785, 
heir-apparent to the throne of France, was 
confined in the "Temple" prison at the time 
the Revolution cost his father his life. He was 
harshly treated, and the only joy of his short 
childhood was the companionship of the 
sparrows that frequented the battlements of 
his cruel jail to drink and bathe in the water 
left in the stony hollows by the rain. Every 
day the frail little fellow climbed the turret 
stairs, and spent his time with the birds listen- 
ing to their happy twitterings as they fluttered 
affectionately about him and perched on his 
shoulders and hands. He called, them his 
birds — and they were the only subjects the 
royal boy ever had, to pay him homage. 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 137 

He died in prison when only ten years old. 
The janitors and the people called him "King 
of the Birds" — The birds, at least, were his 
mourners. 

A TRAVELED PIGEON 

Ross B. Franklin, a bird-keeper, tells the 
readers of St. Nicholas about his homing 
pigeon, "Pete," that was sent with a consign- 
ment of these carrier birds via San Francisco 
to Auckland, New Zealand, and found its way 
home again after traveling 8000 miles. 

From Auckland Pete escaped, and made wide 
circles in the air to get his bearings, but find- 
ing no landmark, he struck out in the direction 
of America, and flew till nearly exhausted, 
when the ship Lucy Bell welcomed him on 
board in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and 
brought him back to San Francisco. 

Discovering a little tag on his leg (unnoticed 
or unguessed during his voyage), the wharf- 
men soon identified him as one of the lot con- 
signed to New Zealand several weeks before. 
They guessed that a bird wise enough to 
figure out and steer an ocean flight could reach 
home by land, and fastening a brief story of 
his wanderings to his leg, they tossed him into 
the air. They saw him rise almost out of 
sight, and finally shape his course to the east, 
for a 3000-mile trip home. 



138 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Nine days afterwards Pete hopped down 
from the dove-house at his old quarters, and 
joined his mates at a breakfast of corn, wheat, 
and crumbs. Counting the stages of his 
journey out and his return, he must have 
traveled in all, by wing or ship, not less than 
8000 miles. 

Few more significant titles than "homing 
pigeon" were ever applied to any creature, 
or better justified the making of a word. The 
passionate instinct of this bird for home could 
have furnished another simile to Robert 
Seagraves' hymn — (and who has not sung 
old "Amsterdam"?); 

"Rivers to the ocean run 
Nor stay in all their course. 



So a soul that's born of God 

Pants to view His glorious face," etc. 

A WINGED "APOSTLE OF GOD" 

The swallow has been welcomed and loved 
by mankind as a friend and benefactor since 
the daybreak of history. Hesiod one thou- 
sand years before Christ wrote of the fairy 
visitor, 

"Thro* the gray dawn the swallow lifts his wing, 
Herald of morning, harbinger of spring." 

Reverenced in Egypt, this active little Ariel 
of the winged world has been embalmed in the 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 139 

tombs of its kings and pictured on its monu- 
ments as the metamorphosed Isis, and alike 
around the temples of China and the snow- 
huts of Lapland, children watch the flash of 
his flight and hear his sociable song. Anacreon 
celebrates him in his eleventh Ode (though 
the irritable poet harbored a grudge against 
the little chirper for waking him up too early 
in the morning, and his verses are rather 
ill-humored). 

Ancient Rhodes held the bird so dear that 
they hailed the annual return of the swallows 
with joyful processions, where youths and 
maidens sang songs in their praise. 

The Bohemians call the swallow "The 
Virgin Mary's Bird," and the French peasantry 
name him he poule de Dieu, "the apostle of 
God," because, they say, when Christ was in 
the wilderness, and wounded by the brambles, 
the swallows picked the thorns out of his 
flesh. 1 

Of more immediate interest than anything 
in history or mythology is the yearly testimony 
of the friendship of the swallow for the farmer 
and the cotton-planter. This embraces every 
species of the bird — the barn- or eave-swallow 
(companion of home-building man everywhere), 

1 Most of the above citations, and a few others else- 
where, are part of an interesting article in the Christian 
Intelligence, by Fred Myron Colby. 



140 THE BIRDS OFGOD 

the cliff-swallow, the white-bellied swallow, 
and the purple martin — if not the little 
bank-swallow. Harriet Williams Myers in 
the Youth's Companion enumerates house-flies, 
horse-flies, gnats, codling-moths, canker-worms, 
moths, leaf-rolling moths, the gipsy and brown- 
tail moths, elm-beetles, grasshoppers, plant- 
lice, spiders, cabbage-butterflies, chick-beetles, 
rose-bugs, May-beetles, potato- and cucumber- 
bugs in the formidable list of destructive 
insects against which the swallows take the 
farmers' part. But their most conspicuous 
service is their war against the boll weevil, 
the destroyer of cotton and pirate of the 
commercial world. The weevil in the moth or 
miller state is flying at large during the mi- 
grating season of the birds, and they snatch 
them by millions. Forty-seven adult wee- 
vils have been found in the crop of a single 
cliff-swallow. 

A WILD DOVE CURED HER 

On the back porch of a pleasant home on 
the Grand Boulevard near Overton Park, a 
suburb of the city of Memphis, Tenn., Mrs. 
Woods, a gray-haired widow lady, was pruning 
her climbing plants, and talking to a friend, 
Mr. Isaac Motes, a commercial traveler, when 
a wild dove chased by a hawk dashed through 
the vines against a screen-door and fell to the 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 141 

floor. The hawk fled when the lady screamed, 
and her friend struck at it with his cane. 

The persecuted bird seemed more dead 
than alive, and lay on its face, with spread 
wings, when Mrs. Woods carried it to the 
sofa in her sitting-room. But the trembling 
creature recovered in no long time, and soon 
became so fond of the good lady that it fol- 
lowed her everywhere. In her life, secluded 
and often sad, the bird grew to be a cherished 
companion, and as the months rolled by she 
began to regard it as God's messenger, for 
several lawsuits brought against her by parties 
in land disputes were decided in her favor, 
and her sons employed in the city, who had 
been rather wayward, came out to see her 
oftener, and spent Sundays at home. 

Through summer, autumn, and winter the 
dove, devoted to its mistress, never offered to 
go away, but in the spring the voices of the 
wild doves in the trees enticed it, and it rose 
in the air, and for the first time turned a deaf 
ear to her call. Mrs. Wood grieved over her 
loss almost as if a child had died, and would 
go out daily and plead "dovey dovey" for it 
to come to her, though she could never be 
certain that among the birds she saw was her 
pet. 

Winter came again and Mr. Motes, who had 
always boarded at the widow's home between 



142 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

his trips, came back soon after Christmas only 
to find her dangerously sick with pneumonia, 
her sons and a trained nurse in attendance, and 
the family physician coming in four or five 
times a day. The case was so threatening 
that the boarder — a friend of two years — 
would not leave the family. The patient 
grew worse, and on the night when every one 
felt that she would not live till morning, Mr. 
Motes passed from the sick-room and walked 
softly up and down the hall. The weather 
was very cold, and sleet and snow were falling. 
In a lull of the wind he heard something strike 
against the outside glass door. Opening it 
quickly he started back to see a little dove 
flutter in and tumble along the hall. Half 
flying and half hopping, it hurried towards 
the door of the sick-room. The astonished 
boarder, hardly considering what he did, 
pushed open a crack of the door and instantly 
the surprised and speechless watchers inside 
heard the hurtle of wings. The dove flew up 
on the bed and nestled close to the cheek of 
the apparently dying woman. (The spell of 
the unspoken words, "It is her bird," in the 
hushed hearts of the two sons, must have 
fallen on every spectator, and stayed every 
hand.) The gentle pressure of the bird to 
her cheek seemed to produce a soothing effect 
upon the panting patient, and straining for- 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 143 

ward the watchers waited while minutes passed, 
and saw that she breathed easier. The doctor, 
felt her pulse, and the anxious look began to 
leave his face. He held the thin wrist softly 
in his hand, and with the other stroked the 
glossy back of the little dove. The sick 
woman's breath lost its gasping sound. The 
doctor repeated the soothing medicine he had 
been giving her, and she fell asleep, the bird 
still nestling against her cheek. He went 
away in the morning, but returned at ten 
o'clock. "With good nursing she will get 
well," he said. 

She did get well, though it took a long time. 
She lived to go about her house as usual, 
though grayer, and more stooping in form. 
And her dear little dove would not leave her 
again. Another spring had passed when the 
narrator told the story, and the voices of the 
wild doves in the trees had called to it in vain. 

This strange account of inspired bird friend- 
ship, of which the above is a mere abstract, 
was published at length by Mr. Motes in the 
Interior of July 4, 1907. A story very similar 
in its outline of fact appeared a few years ago 
in the Troy (N. Y.) Times of a Saxtons River 
woman's experience with a dove that came to 
her, a stranger. 



144 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

BIRDS WANT HUMAN COMPANY 

"I beheld, and lo, there was no man and all the 
birds of the heavens were fled." — Jer. 4:25. 

A subtle attraction draws birds, wild or 
tame, to the regions where men dwell. To 
the sorrowful prophet the absence of the one 
explained the absence of the other. 

Judson Kempton remarks that to the birds' 
idea man is the Supreme Being. Suppose 
they conceive him as such — the alter ipse — 
or all they know of God — and we can believe 
that, in following human colonization to build 
their nests, they set us an example of trust in 
a higher power. Especially is this the case 
with singing birds. 

"Did you ever go," asks Kempton, "into 
a tract of primeval forest? In the Maine 
woods, in Nova Scotia, in the Adirondack 
region, in Wisconsin, in Oregon, I have noticed 
that in the depths of the wild forest one will 
scarcely see a bird. . . . There is no song. 
Except the rustle and snap of leaf and twig 
all is still as the grave. The silence becomes 
lonesome and oppressive. It is on the edge 
of the forest, near the haunts of men, that the 
birds sing their concerts, and it is by the high- 
ways where men come and go that they build 
their nests." 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 145 

COLUMBUS AND THE SEA-BIRDS 

Some have suggested that the question of 
king or president for "Our Country" once 
hung upon a trifle. Columbus on his first 
voyage was steering, it is said, straight towards 
Florida when one of his men noted a flight of 
birds and intimated that it was a sign from 
heaven, and that he ought to follow them. 
Columbus himself shared the same belief 
more or less, and turned his keel southward. 
That turn made twenty degrees of North 
latitude English instead of Spanish — a differ- 
ence between two civilizations, with their 
centuries of different laws and language. 
"There's a divinity that shapes our ends." 

BIRD MISCHIEF EXAGGERATED 

"Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom?" 
questions Job. And the hawk, like every 
predatory fowl of the air, answers for man by 
not only flying but feeding according to the 
aptitude the God of Nature gave him; only 
the same Power made man his master, and 
the interests of the bird are secondary when 
natural liberty and human economy conflict. 

The Biological Survey (established in Wash- 
ington in 1885) has proved the fallacy of 
many popular notions as to how many species 
of the winged creation do us more hurt than 



146 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

good. The bulletins of the survey report the 
examination of more than fifteen thousand 
birds, and have published information of their 
food habits. Of the seventy-three species of 
the hawk and owl tribes in this country, only 
six are found to be injurious. The hen-hawk 
is one of the six. 

WHAT THE CROWS DID 

Said ploughboy Dick to ploughboy Ned, 
"I wish those rascal crows were dead. 
That pair on yonder hickory top 
Have counted all our sprouting crop, 
And when the blade on every seed 
Becomes a sweetmeat for their greed, 
The smutty knaves will pick the best, 
And call their tribe to steal the rest. 
They've started now! they're coming in, 
The cornfield feast will soon begin. 
'Caw, caw* — I'll wager what you dare 
They're laughing at my scarecrow there. 
Last Sunday, like a monstrous bat, 
One flew twice round his ragged hat, 
And one lit prowling in the rows 
Ten paces from his timber toes. 
What poacher would not laugh that saw 
A beanpole sheriff stuffed with straw? 

"The day when I dressed up the fright 
Squire Plummer said — and he was right — 
1 A home-made terror tinkered so 
Would scare a horse, but not a crow.' 
Well, let the pilfering blackguards scorn 
My dumb policeman in the corn, 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 147 

Poke mischief at his false alarms, 
His drunken legs, his sprawling arms, 
His tatters tied with cobweb yarn: — 
Vve got my rifle in the barn" 

Said ploughboy Ned to ploughboy Dick 
"For crows no vengeance is too quick, 
Black as their feathers thro' and thro ' ; 
The robber rogues are murderers too. 
That very pair but yesterday 
Stole a poor cat-bird's eggs away, 
And once among the plantain leaves 
Sam Peters saw the bloody thieves 
Out of her nest a thrasher drive 
And eat her young ones up alive!" 

"Enough," said Dick, "They've sealed their fate, 

We'll make their cornfield picnic wait. 

The lawless wretches have no friends, 

And on their heads their sin descends. 

See, Ned! Go quiet as you can; 

They're flying low. I know their plan. 

Walk down the road — you're just the size 

To foil their wit and fool their eyes. 

I'll lurk, and catch them at their fun 

Thro' the back orchard with my gun." 

The scheme was good, the boys agreed; 
Dick armed himself with stealthy speed; 
Ned paced the street in slow suspense; 
The crows lit on the cornfield fence. 
A sailing hawk with eye profane 
Hung threatening o'er the farmyard lane. 
A rush — a shadow terror-streaked 
Shot down the sky — a chicken shrieked, 
And straight on laboring wings away 
The pirate bore his struggling prey. 



148 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

The hens set up their helpless din, 
The ducks cried out, the doves flew in; 
Ned screamed to Dick, and on the run 
Dick went — too late to use his gun, 
And staring where the falcon rose 
Both brothers quite forgot the crows. 
But soon across their wondering sight 
There dashed two furies dark as night, 
And following swift the bandit's path, 
Fell on him in tumultuous wrath 
So fierce that, sore from many a blow, 
He let the screeching chicken go. 

The airy combat raged apace 

With savage swoop and whirling chase, 

And spite met anger, plume and quill, 

'Twas hook and lance, 'twas beak and bill, 

When from the woods six fighters more 

Came out and joined the flying war! 

The hawk in torment wheeled and flapped, 

And tacked and turned and snarled and snapped; 

His sickle mouth and talon toes 

Launch harmless at the pelting crows: 

With thrusts that never miss their mark 

The black-winged bloodhounds round him bark, 

Till soundly whipped with feathers shred, 

The gray free-booter squealed and fled. 

With thoughts that found no instant words, 

The brothers watched their hated birds 

As toward the echoing woods the two 

With all their cawing cousins flew. 

Dick turned, and, with a meaning look, 
Back to the barn his gun he took, 
And glancing round the farmyard, said, 
"At least, we'll save our poultry, Ned; 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 149 

Let crows keep watch when hen-hawks dive. 

That stolen chick is here, alive! 

We'll watch the corn; that acre-full 

Will grow too big for birds to pull, 

Or, if our inky friends take leave 

By this, meanwhiles, to pick and thieve, 

(Unless a hen-hawk comes too near) 

Perhaps — we'll shoot those crows — next year." 

T. B. in The Ploughman. 

A HEN THAT MADE MONEY 

Some one sent this story from Clay County, 
Iowa, to a 1900 number of the Boston Tran- 
script. A hen established her nest in a grain 
bin on top of eight hundred bushels of wheat, 
and laid a litter of eggs. When the owner, get- 
ting ready to market his grain, found the heap 
pre-empted by a sitting hen, he concluded not 
to "break her up," but to wait and let her 
hatch and come off with her chickens. Mean- 
time the price of wheat went up, and the 
farmer discovered that his hen had made one 
hundred dollars extra for him by being let 
alone, and allowed to take her own time. 

MRS. NANSEN'S PIGEON 

When Frithiof Nansen, the famous Arctic 
explorer, was in the Polar Zone, and had been 
absent nearly three years, his wife, sitting in 
her house at Christiania, Norway, heard a 
gentle tap, and on opening the window she 



150 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

was astonished to see a carrier pigeon fly into 
the room. Astonishment turned to delight 
when she recognized the bird as one that the 
explorer had taken with him thirty months 
ago, and to read a message from him, tied to 
its leg, saying that all was going well with him. 

The little envoy had crossed the hideous 
wastes of the frozen North, and traveled 
thousands of miles in the air to bring good 
news to his home and mistress. As an illus- 
tration of the homing instinct, what this bird 
suffered and survived ranks him in carrier 
history far above the "Traveled Pigeon " of 
a former story. The Christian Work and 
Evangelist said with some reason, "Mrs. 
Nansen's pigeon is one of the world's wonders." 

A similar account, older, and in some respects 
even more remarkable, purports to be the 
story of the return of a carrier dove to Ayr- 
shire, Scotland, Oct. 13, 1850, from Sir John 
Ross in the Polar Sea. (See Sargent's "Arctic 
Adventure by Sea and Land," p. 287.) 

BIRD FRIENDS OF THE RUSSIANS 

O'Meara's "Voice from St. Helena" quotes 
an experience in Napoleon's Russian cam- 
paign, intimating that the first frown of his 
sinister reception came from the sky on black 
wings. 

As the French entered Moscow a great 




AMERICAN GOLDFINCH 

Upper Figure, Male; Lower Figure, Female 

(One-half natural size) 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 151 

r 

flock of ravens came and settled on the roof 
of the Kremlin. They kept up a constant 
croaking, and distress'd the foreign soldiers 
by flying down and flapping about their heads. 
These Muscovite crows stayed by until just 
before the great conflagration, and flew away, 
shouting back their sarcastic farewells to the 
doomed army and its chief. 

HER SNOWBIRD CAME BACK 

This tiny feathered creature — confused 
often, by the common observer, with the 
snow bunting or the chickadee (titmouse), but 
wearing a grayer coat than either — has 
received small attention from the poets, at 
least under its right name, but in winsomeness, 
vivacity, and all the bird virtues, there is 
no winter visitor that better earns its wel- 
come than our real snowbird, the little junco 
hyemalis. 

Richard Braunstein, in the Watchman, tells 
how one of its sociable tribe made a human 
acquaintance, and kept it. A lady saw the 
bird perched on a vine branch by her window 
and, raising the sash softly, she brushed the 
snow away and dropped some crumbs on the 
sill. The bird ate them, and the next day 
came again. This was repeated day after 
day till the little thing grew so tame that it 



152 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

would eat out of her hand, and finally flew into 
the room and sat upon her shoulder. 

When spring was approaching she tied a 
silken thread around one of its legs. The flock 
disappeared from the neighborhood not long 
afterwards, and the lady saw no more of her 
pretty guest. 

December came, and one day she heard 
something pecking the glass, and saw a snow- 
bird at the window. As soon as she lifted the 
sash it flew to her, and she recognized at once 
the silk thread on its leg. Her little Junco 
had come back. He had remembered her, 
and flown all the way from Hudson's Bay to 
greet his benefactress. 

OUR PRETTIEST NEIGHBOR 

The article in the last section, illustrating 
the courage of the humming-bird, represents 
its force of character, but not the trait that 
makes us love it most. It is brave but song- 
less — and the charm that we never tire of 
in the tiny creature is its beauty. Katharine 
H. Terry, praising this "spark of iridescent 
light," surmises how the Creator, seeing what 
wealth of bewitching grace He had lavished 
on the form and feathers of his smallest 
bird, stopped at the gift of music, lest He 
should bestow too much loveliness on a 
single model. 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 153 

"Ah, little dainty mystery 
That brighter makes a summer day, 
Part bee, part bird, part butterfly, 
Part rainbow blent in wondrous way, 

"Another gift, another grace 
Were more than would to thee belong. 
And so, methinks, thy tiny race 
Were thus denied the gift of song." 

THE CHINESE LOO-OW 

This is the trained cormorant that serves 
the yellow fishermen of the Far East. These 
birds are as efficient in the water as the trained 
falcons of the old-time hunters were in the air. 
About the size of a goose, large-billed, gray- 
feathered, and standing low on webbed feet, 
everything pertaining to them denotes the 
born diver, and they are so sure and swift 
in their plunge that they very rarely miss a 
fish. Fish is their natural food, but in spite 
of their voracity their masters have disciplined 
them to bring their prey to the boat instead 
of devouring it; and, no matter how many 
boats are on the bay, each cormorant invariably 
paddles to his owner with his catch. When 
the fish are abundant these astonishing pur- 
veyors will fill the boats — and the fishermen 
reward them with a full feed when the catch 
is over. 



154 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

MRS. BEN WAH AND HER PARROT 

This story is told in "The Battle with the 
Slums," by Jacob Riis, the Danish philan- 
thropist of New York City. 

Mrs. Ben Wah was the French Canadian 
widow of an Iroquois Indian. She lived in a 
little attic in New York, and was very poor, 
but so generous that she would give the last 
thing she had to a fellow-creature poorer than 
herself. The time came when she could no 
longer work, and charity provided for her. 

When Jacob Riis called to see her he had 
been told by physicians that nothing ailed her 
except that she was tired, and had made up 
her mind to die. Mr. Riis tried to interest 
her in conversation, but she seemed indifferent 
to the living world, and he could not rouse her. 
Finally he told her he was going away soon 
across the ocean, and asked if she could not 
think of something he might bring her to make 
her happy. The old woman was silent a 
minute, and her face seemed to soften with a 
reminiscent smile. 

"Once, when I was young and was peddling 
beads," she said, "I saw a bird — oh, splendid, 
big, and beautiful, with a red turban; and it 
could talk, talk! ... if I could only see that 
bird again — but no, no; it was so long ago, 
I was young then, but now I'm old, old, old." 



OUR WINGED FRIENDS 155 

Mr. Riis went back to his office, and wrote 
out the interview in his happiest way, and told 
what he wanted, and why. Letters came in 
piles, answering the published article, and 
pledging money. Mrs. Ben Wah should have 
her parrot. 

In a few days the parrot came — big and 
beautiful, with a green coat, and with a red 
turban on its head — and the ladies of the 
charitable building carried it to Mrs. Ben 
Wah in a bright, handsome cage. The poor 
woman stood with wide eyes when told that 
it was hers. 

"Here we are!" shouted the parrot, turning 
a somersault on its perch, and holding its 
head out through the bars to be scratched. 
Mrs. Ben Wah wept happy tears as she looked 
at her present, and realized that she had a 
companion that could talk. A joy once wished 
for had come to her from the past, and brought 
back her youth, and a desire to live. 

When Mr. Riis came back from Europe he 
found her and "Polly" inseparable friends. 
The bird had learned to talk French Cana- 
dian, and enjoyed the freedom of the little 
attic chamber; and at night, when its aged 
mistress slept, it would climb to her pillow 
and cuddle its head in her neck. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 

"To the four patriarch households, relic souls 
Of Ruin, drifting with the drifting dead 
Across the welter of a shoreless world, 
A bird bro't news of land. And since that day, 
In strait of human need what year has missed 
Of feathered friendship some swift rescue sent, 
Some ancillary voice, some tutelar wing?" 

THE general purpose of this section is 
to record anecdotes of bird-deliverers 
in cases of human danger or impending death, 
or of relief afforded by birds to human beings 
in distressing emergencies. 

CHRISTOPHER THE RAVEN 

In a humble home, called in pleasantry by 
his wife "the Ark," Jean Lenoir, a French 
ferryman, lived on a small island in the Gulf 
of Lyons, not far from the mouth of the River 
Rhone. 

One day his young son Pierre found a 
wounded raven and brought it home. One 
of its wings was broken, and he begged his 
parents to let him keep it for a pet. Consent 
was won only after the boy had reminded his 
mother of the story of the Ark and the Del- 
uge told them by the priest, and pleaded that 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 157 

their "Ark" should have a raven as well as 
Noah's. 

He named the bird "Christopher," after 
his patron saint, and when its wing was healed 
he taught it a great many cunning tricks. 
Father Gregoire, the village priest, who often 
crossed from the mainland to the island, 
became fond of the bird, and always brought 
some tidbit to tempt its appetite when he 
came to the fisher's cottage. The raven 
learned his name and his generous habit so 
well that whenever one cried out to it, " Chris- 
topher! Father Gregoire! Food!" it would 
rise in the air and meet the priest in his boat, 
diving its beak into the good man's pockets. 

A fearful rainstorm one night flooded the 
Rhone, and hurled its waters into the Gulf, 
carrying away Lenoir's boat, and threatening 
to sweep his little home into the sea. Day- 
light showed to the villagers on the opposite 
shore the situation of the island family, and 
Father Gregoire and his people hurried wildly 
to and fro, endeavoring to contrive a way to 
rescue their imperilled friends. No boat 
could live in the boiling flood, and the simple 
folk owned no apparatus powerful enough to 
shoot a line so far in the storm. The water 
rose higher and higher, and the poor islanders 
were beginning to look death in the face, 
when Pierre suddenly bethought himself of 



158 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

his bird, and screamed into his father's ear, 
"Christopher! Father Gregoire!" 

Instantly the ferryman rummaged out a 
roll of twine, and fastened one end to the 
leg of the pet raven, and the boy shouted to 
the bird, "Food, Christopher! Father Gre- 
goire! Food!" pointing to the opposite shore. 

The raven spread its broad wings and 
swooped into the storm. Every eye watched 
its flight with painful anxiety, and twice a 
groan of pity broke from the multitude as 
the brave messenger was buffeted and almost 
beaten down into the waves; but the reso- 
lute bird reached land, falling exhausted into 
eager hands that waited, and at once swift 
assistants were at work on the cord. 

Communication was established with the 
island, and in less than half an hour the ferry- 
man and his family were drawn to safety, 
just as their little house fell crashing into the 
roaring freshet. 

From that hour Pierre Lenoir's raven was 
almost sainted. Christopher ("Christ car- 
rier") meant for the helpful bird, at least, 
"Carrier of a Christian deed." 

JACK, THE RAVEN OF LABRADOR 

A story similar in some features to the 
above is told by Edmund Collins, of which 
the following is an abstract: 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 159 

George and Frank Blackburn lived with 
their parents in one of the larger settlements 
on the Labrador shore. About eight miles 
down the rocky coast stands Cormorant Island, 
a ragged cliff four hundred feet high, quite 
near the mainland, and inhabited on its sum- 
mit by colonies of wild birds. For centuries 
daring sailors and fishermen have risked their 
lives climbing its bleak acclivity to gather 
eggs from the cormorants' nests, and records of 
victims who have fallen from its slippery sides, 
or starved on the top of the cliff long ago, 
have given the place an evil reputation. The 
rock can be climbed, but descent is next to im- 
possible. More than once it has been the ambi- 
tion of hardy boys to surmount the perilous task 
andbringhomeasackofeggs, and George Black- 
burn had studied over the rash adventure for 
two years before he and his brother and his 
cousin, Ned Bradshaw, started in a skiff one 
June morning to undertake it. 

With two steel-hooked gaffs George man- 
aged with incredible difficulty to ascend the 
nearly perpendicular rock, but found that 
he could not get down. The cormorants were 
fierce at being disturbed, and the young 
climber was obliged to defend his eyes, if not 
his life, with his steel gaffs, while his com- 
panions shot all that happened to fly low 
enough for their guns to reach. 



160 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Night came on, and though it brought a 
respite from the fury of the birds, George 
was left helpless, to repent of organizing his 
wild escapade without his parents' consent 
or knowledge. There he hung, as it were, 
between the sea and the sky, caught in a trap 
of his own making. It was hard so high in 
the air to converse with his brother and cousin 
in the boat below, surrounded by the cease- 
less wash of the water, but they heard his 
shouted directions to go back home and bring 
help. 

After a sleepless night, with an accompani- 
ment of thunder and rain, morning came, 
and the angry birds began their attacks upon 
him again, flying into his face and eyes, and 
but for their increasing caution after many 
had been killed by his hooked weapons, he 
would have been wounded, or worse, by their 
hawk-like beaks. Wretched and exhausted 
he finally caught sight of a company of his 
native villagers who had come in boats, or 
swarmed through the marshes and clambered 
over the rocks to the high rugged shore oppo- 
site his island prison. 

George had a pet raven, named "Jack," 
and he could hear the bird's voice, and see 
the faithful creature circling in the air above 
the crowd. His favorite had followed the 
grand flight of anxious friends, and seemed 



OUR WINGED HELPERS l6l 

to understand, and feel as much concerned 
as the rest. The excited boy could talk, 
with some effort, with the people across the 
deep chasm, but knew as little as they what 
could be done for him. After all endeavors 
to toss him cans of food had failed, and coils 
of rope thrown to him had fallen short at 
every trial, he spied his mother crying on 
the shore, and a thought, born of despera- 
tion — perhaps of hope — flashed into his 
mind. He yelled to the throng below him, 
"Catch Jack, and tie your smallest line to 
his leg!" 

Quickly as possible this was done, and when 
George shouted "Come, Jack! Come!" the 
willing raven flew straight across with the 
dangling cord. By means of this, ropes 
pieced to sufficient length were sent to him, 
and fastening the end firmly round a snag in 
the cliff, he dropped the life-line and lowered 
himself by it to a waiting skiff. Jack, the 
rescuer, was the first to welcome him, scream- 
ing his delight as he flew to his young mas- 
ter's arms. He was the hero of the occasion 
but did not know it. 

SAVED BY THE SOUND OF WINGS 

A caravan in the great African desert had 
traveled several days without water. Every 
one in the company suffered severely, and one 



162 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

had died. Three or four were crazed or sink- 
ing with the agony of thirst. The sun, 

"All in a hot and copper sky," 

beat down without mercy, making day one 
burning misery. Even the camp tents under 
which they tried to shelter themselves were 
almost scorched above their heads. The 
ground was like a bed of living coals, and the 
dewless night — the only time when they 
could travel — scarcely cooled it. The hope 
of soon finding a green spot with wells of 
water, as laid down on the map of their jour- 
ney, was all that kept them alive. The oasis 
should have been reached days ago. They 
had lost their reckoning in a sea of sand. 

On the sixth day they killed a camel, and 
shared among them the loathsome fluid in 
the creature's stomach. Some even caught 
and drank the blood. Such a repast might 
prolong their lives, but could not lessen 
their suffering. Two more days of vain toil 
and expectation wore out nearly the last of 
their strength. Only enough was left to "call 
upon God in their trouble,'' like the poor sail- 
ors in the 107th Psalm. As one heart they 
besought Him for relief — or, at least, that 
He would soften the pangs of death. 

Then, in the early evening, the strongest 
man, mounted on the hardiest camel, was 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 163 

sent forward from the camp to explore the way. 
He left his friends with sad farewells, for he 
might never return. Pressing on over the 
desert for two or three hours, seeing no encour- 
aging sign, he was suddenly startled by a 
roaring sound, and a shadow of something 
vanishing over the plain. The next moment 
he shouted for joy. It was a flock of ortyges 
— birds of the partridge kind. The trav- 
eler knew that these "ground-flyers" never 
venture far from water. Planting his long 
staff firmly in the sand so as to lean in the 
direction the birds had taken, he hung his 
white camel-cloth upon it, and hurried back 
to camp. The exhausted company hailed 
his news with eager thanksgivings, and the 
weakest forgot their weakness as all hastily 
struck their tents, and followed their guide. 
Soon after sunrise the next day they found 
water and grass and trees. Rest and the "cup 
of cold water" were life, after tasting the 
bitterness of death. 

"But for that sound of c angels' wings,'" 
they said, "few if any of us could have recov- 
ered strength to struggle forward beyond our 
last camping-ground, and we should have 
perished within a day's march of safety." 

"As birds flying so will the Lord of Hosts defend 
.... and defending He will deliver." — Isa. 31:5. 



164 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

GENGHIS KHAN AND THE BIRDS 

This famous warrior chief who figured so 
largely in Oriental history eight centuries ago, 
used to amuse himself, between his cam- 
paigns, in field and forest sport with his knights 
and his hunting-hawks. Once, weary with 
the chase, he retired alone in the heat of the 
day from his companions, and rode in quest 
of water to quench his thirst. 

There was no stream in sight, but he found 
a dripping spring where he could fill his hunt- 
ing-cup. He had secured a small quantity 
and was raising it to his lips, when his falcon 
that was circling above his head darted down 
and upset the cup. This occurred three times, 
and after the third spilling the enraged warrior 
struck the bird a blow that killed it. Going 
nearer_to the source of the spring to find pos- 
sibly a better flow of water, he was horrified 
to see in the hole of the fountain a venomous 
snake coiled and cooling itself in the shallow 
water. 

When Genghis was a much younger man, 
after a hard battle that went against him, he 
was hotly chased and in danger of being cap- 
tured by the Tartars. His defenders had 
lost sight of him, and in his moment of peril 
he plunged into a thicket and lay listening for 
his pursuers. As they approached they saw 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 165 

a white owl sitting calmly on a tree over the 
thicket. The owl flew away frightened, and 
after pausing a minute before the fugitive's 
hiding-place, one was heard to say, "Come on! 
That owl would have been scared away before 
this if he had run in here." And the troop 
hurried by. 

Instances of a man rescued by such provi- 
dences involve no divine opinion of his 
character. Such an event is only one more 
evidence of human dependence on sub-human 
helpers. 

ACQUITTED BY A CHICKEN 

All we know of this case is by the post 
factum statement in the Philadelphia Record 
of a bright young cockerel's service to a 
human life. The alibi that saved an accused 
man all centered in a chicken, and the time 
and place when and where it happened to be. 
The man's niece, who lived at his house, 
was found murdered, and found so soon that 
the location of both herself and her uncle, 
before and after, could be dated by witnesses. 

She had brought in the chicken half-drowned 
and laid it in an open oven to dry and recu- 
perate; and it was proved that she did this, 
and therefore was of course at home alive, 
at the very time the uncle accused of her 
death was known to be absent from the house. 



l66 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

The item is a merely reminiscent note, and 
tells us nothing of the unknown murderer, 
or the mourning over the poor girl, but it 
states that the chicken had grown to a fine 
chanticleer, and prophesies that it "will go 
down in history as a famous fowl." 

BESSIE'S PIGEONS 

Jacob Carter and his family, on their 
way to settle in the far West, stopped a few 
weeks at a frontier post, and while there made 
friends of all the fort residents, who became 
especially attached to Bessie Carter, the little 
daughter, and to her pet carrier doves, Pos- 
sum and Tippet. 

Soon after the family had moved on to their 
new location, a war-party of Sioux Indians 
who had broken from their Southern Reserva- 
tion, scattering death and destruction along 
their trail, raided the section where the Car- 
ters had settled, and attacked their house. 
There were but three men, Mr. Carter, his 
son, and his hired man, to fight them, and 
when the hired man was wounded their case 
began to look desperate. They could send 
no one to convey a message back to the 
fort without being seen and shot down by the 
murderous savages, and the doom of the whole 
household seemed certain till a thought of 
Bessie revived a little hope. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 167 

"Send Possum to the Fort," she said. "He 
was at home there such a little while ago, 
and made so many friends — I know he'll 

go." 

Her plan was quickly adopted, and a call 
for help was sped by the swift bird on its airy 
mission. 

Possum took his bearings, and chose his 
direction just as Bessie said he would. There 
was terrible anxiety and desperate fighting 
while the besieged family waited, but at the 
critical moment the shouts of their defenders 
from the Fort were heard, and after a brief 
battle the Indians fled faster than they came. 

THE WREN OF BOYNE WATER 

Tradition gives the credit of saving the 
day for William III against his dethroned 
rival, James II, at the famous battle of the 
Boyne (or "Boyne Water") in Ireland, 1690. 

It was in the month of July, and just before 
the battle. Few of King William's army, weary 
with long watching, were fully awake, and the 
atmosphere was so drowsy that even the sen- 
tinels nodded. The first to rouse himself was 
a drummer boy, and he owed his warning to 
a little bird. A singular sound on the head 
of his drum that lay at his side startled him. 
It was the tiny feet and bill of a wren that 
had discovered some crumbs on the head of 



l68 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

the instrument, and the parchment tightly 
"snared" as it was, redoubled the light echo 
of its movements as it hopped and pecked 
about on the drum-head. The boy sprang 
up just in time to discover a threatening man- 
ceuver of the enemy. But a few minutes 
more, and their approaching forces would 
have surprised William's entrenchments, and 
taken full advantage of their careless con- 
dition. The alarm, sounded immediately, 
brought every man to his feet, and in the 
battle that followed, King James was 
beaten. 

NEWMAN HIGHBORN AND THE 
SWALLOW 

This story of a remarkable deliverance 
was told in the Doylstown (Pa.) Democrat. 
Newman Highborn while roving through the 
Bottsford Mountains, Ga., became separated 
from his companions, and in a careless moment 
fell down the shaft of a deserted coal-mine. 
The pit was two hundred feet deep, and but 
for his stout staff to which he involuntarily 
clung, and which broke his fall a little as it 
hit the rough sides, he would have landed at 
the bottom lifeless. 

Stunned and badly bruised, he lay uncon- 
scious for a time, but when he woke to the 
horror of his situation he realized its hopeless- 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 169 

ness. He was too much weakened by his 
wounds and bruises to try climbing to the sur- 
face, and it was unlikely that his searching 
friends would surmise what had happened 
to him until he was dead. He spent hours 
endeavoring to plan some way of escape, but 
unconsciousness overcame him again, and it 
was another day before he awoke, tortured 
now by hunger and thirst as well as terror. 
There was no doubt that he must starve to 
death in that awful trap. 

Just here the miracle of the story took 
place; or the story itself would never have 
been told. A swift or chimney-swallow, chased 
probably by some bird of prey, plunged into 
the pit, 1 and fluttered down, down, till it fell 
at the man's feet. The strange incident 
roused hope in his mind, though he hardly 
knew why. He clapped his hat over the be- 
wildered swallow, and after a good deal of 
mental toil he thought out a possibility of 
liberation and life. He was almost too lame 
to move, but with painful effort and frequent 

x The notion that swifts or chimney-swallows shut 
their eyes in the act of sweeping down to their hidden 
nests was probably suggested by their apparently blind 
habit of darting (maybe in sport) into any opening be- 
low them during their flight, as if aiming first by sight, 
and then diving by instinct. The writer remembers 
seeing for weeks, with a shiver of pity, the carcass of a 
swallow with spread wings impaled head downwards on 



170 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

rests he managed to take off his shoes. He 
thanked God that he remembered the tale of 
the canny Scotch wife who showed her help- 
less husband on a dizzy chimney-top how to 
save himself. He succeeded in removing his 
stockings — and a long and patient task it 
was to pull out the strong knitting, straighten 
the crinkled yarn around his hand, and then 
open the strands to spread without tangles; 
but life was sweet and worth a desperate 
chance. 

The rest is soon told. The battered and 
half-starved man found a pencil and a few 
matches in his pocket, and on the back of an 
old letter, a stroke or two at a time, he con- 
trived to scribble this fairly intelligible mes- 
sage: "I'm at the bottom of the old Bottsford 
mine shaft. Send help" 

He tied one end of the string to the struggling 
swallow's leg, and the note to the other end, 
and let the bird go. It fluttered about his 
head in confusion a moment, and then shot 

the fork-prong of a chimney lightning-rod. A stranger 
case of the occasionally fatal plunge of the swift was 
witnessed in Seymour, Connecticut on the 25th of Sep- 
tember, 191 1. A horse belonging to George Miller, a 
farmer, stood reaching with open jaws for an apple that 
hung above him, when a chimney-swallow suddenly 
launched itself from the air into the animal's throat, and 
choked him. Miller lost his horse, but the mistake of 
a poor bird had a better sequel in the Highborn story. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 171 

upwards towards the dot of light at the mouth 
of the pit. 

Highborn's companions had been hunting 
for him, and had been to the old coal-pit twice 
and shouted down — probably while the im- 
prisoned man lay unconscious. Providen- 
tially they came again, and this time they saw 
a fluttering bird tied to a long line. They 
released the bird, and followed the line to the 
pit-hole, where they soon discovered the writ- 
ing fastened to the end. Calling loudly some 
words of encouragement down to their fam- 
ished friend, and hearing a faint response, 
they hurried away, and in good time returned 
with refreshments and ample coils of rope. 
After lowering food and drink to the unfor- 
tunate man, they felt in a few minutes his 
signal on the rope, and lifted him slowly and 
carefully to life and safety. 



BILLY THE COCKATOO 

The New York Mail and Express has cele- 
brated a wise and affectionate pet cockatoo 
named Billy whose love and care for his 
former master during his fatal sickness had 
already given it a high character, when it 
became the property of an adventurous trav- 
eler, Mr. Charles Durand. The bird was a 
talker, and acted as his alarm-clock, waking 



172 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

him in the morning with his cry, "Time to 
get up!" 

One day Durand, while sojourning in the 
tropics, lay asleep in his tent during the hot 
midday hours, when the call "Time to get 
up!" accompanied with a violent flapping of 
wings and sharp screams started him from 
his slumber to look into the eyes of a deadly 
snake which had coiled itself close to his bed. 
The snake reared itself ready to spring when, 
quick as lightning, Billy darted from his 
perch, seized it by the neck, and held the 
writhing reptile till a servant came and killed it. 

BIRD MONITORS AND A WISE GIPSY 

During the Austro-Prussian war, in 1866, 
when Archduke Joseph and his troops were 
retreating before the Prussian advance, they 
encamped in a Bohemian town, and the 
archduke was lodged in a cottage. About 
midnight his adjutant reported that a gipsy 
soldier wished to see him on a very im- 
portant matter. Being admitted the man 
announced that the enemy were approaching 
to surprise his camp. 

"How do you know?" demanded the arch- 
duke. 

The gipsy took him to the door, and showed 
him numbers of birds flying, as if by a common 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 173 

movement, from a stretch of woodland in the 
distance. 

"Birds sleep — as well as men," he said. 
" These birds would not be flying by night if 
they had not been disturbed. The Prussians 
are marching through the woods." • 

The archduke treated the warning seri- 
ously, and a turn-out was ordered at once. 
An hour later the outposts were fighting the 
Prussian advance, and driving them back — 
and the Austrian camp was saved. 

A CANARY'S DEATH-SONG 

One instance of a bird that gave its life in 
the act of saving the life of a family was tele- 
graphed from Stamford, Ct., to the New 
York Tribune. 

Gas thrown off from an unventilated coal- 
fire in the kitchen range, in the house of Mr. 
and Mrs. Frank Etero poisoned the air where 
a canary hung in its cage, till the bird died a 
slow death. With its last breath it broke 
out into song, and the notes were loud enough 
to awaken Mr. Etero. He arose with a 
sense of suffocation, and was barely able to 
raise a window and call for help. Neighbors 
rushing into the apartments found him uncon- 
scious on the floor, and his wife insensible 
in bed in a room just off the kitchen. 

A physician was called, and both recov- 



174 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

ered under treatment. Their first thought 
when consciousness returned was for the dear 
little bird, and their grief was bitter when the 
pet to whom they owed so much was brought 
in dead in his cage. 

"Does God come to birds' funerals ?" sobbed 
a little boy, lamenting over his lifeless duck- 
ling. 

"I think so," his mother replied. "You 
know the Bible says not one of them falls to 
the ground without your Father." 

A WAR-HAWK'S PROVIDENTIAL 
ERRAND 

In General Sherman's "Memoirs" the follow- 
ing true incident connected with the founder- 
ing of the Central America at sea off the coast 
of Georgia in 1857, with five hundred passen- 
gers and a million dollars of treasure, is re- 
ported from the lips of the Swedish sea-captain 
who saved sixty of the shipwrecked multitude. 

The Swedish barque on its homeward course 
from Honduras, was running down the Gulf 
Stream, off the same coast, in heavy weather, 
when the captain saw a man-of-war hawk 
circle about the vessel and gradually narrow 
its flight towards the deck, and seem to aim 
at his head. He seized a belaying pin and 
struck at the bird, but missed it. A second 
time it darted towards him, when the cap- 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 175 

tain, believing it meant to attack him, struck 
again, and felled it to the deck. 

Something in the unusual and peculiar 
character of the occurrence made him uneasy. 
A sailor's imagination is quick to sense an 
omen of unknown danger or accident, and 
finally, without really being able to tell the 
reason why, he went to the binnacle, and 
noting the direction he was steering, ordered 
the course altered one point to the east. 

It grew dark soon after, and while the cap- 
tain was pacing the deck he heard voices 
around his ship, and was able to discover 
human forms afloat in the water. Instantly 
he brought the ship's head to the wind, and 
lowered all his boats. The sailors found scores 
of wrecked men and women helpless in the 
open sea clinging to skylights, doors, spars, 
and whatever else remained of the Central 
America. The men in the boats succeeded 
in saving only sixty, for the sea was rough. 
Had the Swedish captain neglected to change 
his course after the mysterious warning of 
the bird, it seems certain that not a single one 
of the castaways would have survived the 
night. 

ANOTHER SEA-MESSENGER 

It is conventional in schools of art to pic- 
ture heavenly messengers with wings. We 



176 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

are continually learning of new instances 
where the idea is literally realized, though not 
in stereotyped angel form. 

Says Mr. Norwood in his "Facts and Phases 
of Animal Life": A gentleman of Notting Hill 
(England) told the writer that a friend of his 
was crossing the ocean in a passenger-ship 
when, one morning, a sea-bird of some kind, 
a very long way from land, flew near to the 
vessel, surrounding it in smaller and smaller 
circles and then rose in the air, and steered for- 
ward, a little off the sailing course, in a straight 
line, as if pointing the way. The captain was 
so impressed by its action that he ordered 
his helmsman to lay the ship's course in the 
same direction. In a few hours the lookout 
sighted a dark object on the water, which 
proved to be a boat containing two men nearly 
dead of starvation. 

Taken aboard, and kindly cared for, they 
ultimately recovered, and were able to account 
for their condition. During a coasting voyage 
in their sloop they had collided with a dere- 
lict in a fog, forsook their sinking craft, and 
been blown out to sea in their skiff. 

The act of the bird seemed exactly like that 
of an intelligent dog, which in his dumb way 
will summon help in behalf of a fellow-crea- 
ture. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 177 

A LOST BIRD'S MISSION 

Augusta Moore related in the old New 
York Evangelist how "Seaman Ben," a scoffing 
unbeliever, was made a Christian by the sight 
of a thrillingly narrow escape. A sailor friend 
told her the story. 

Ben was at the wheel one day, during an 
ocean voyage, and a little girl, the daughter 
of one of the passengers, sat on a stool near 
by, watching him steer the ship. Men were 
busy up aloft preparing to mend the broken 
iron socket-ring of the top-mast. They had 
removed the heavy ring, and laid it on the miz- 
zen-top, and were securing a chain around the 
mast to hold it while they went below to have 
the broken iron repaired, when a lovely little 
bird that must have wandered far from land, 
and flown from ship to ship (for it was hundreds 
of miles at sea) alighted on the wheel-house, 
and sat perking its pretty head and looking 
at the steersman and the child. 

Ben very carefully raised one hand to 
his Scotch cap, lifted it from his head, and 
quickly covered the bird. The eager little 
girl sprang forward and captured the tiny 
stranger, which showed no sign of fear — and 
at that instant the heavy iron ring dropped 
from the mizzen top and smashed her stool 
into splinters. 



178 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Seaman Ben was a changed man ever after. 
He believed in God. That little bird, he was 
sure, was an angel sent from heaven to save 
the young girl's life; and to awaken a new 
heart in the breast of one poor sailor. 

A DOCTOR'S BIRD-HELPER 

A member of the Pacific Coast Pigeon Soci- 
ety, Mr. G. F. Marsh (merchant), when at his 
store, five miles from his home near the Cliff 
House, San Francisco, carrier-received a bird's 
despatch from his wife that their baby had 
been suddenly taken ill, with symptoms of 
diphtheria. He read the message, called a 
doctor, explained the symptoms as sent by 
his wife, and received the proper medicine. 
Then, tying the vial with the necessary direc- 
tions to the tail of another bird, he let it go. 
The pigeon sped straight for the cliff, where 
it arrived in three minutes. The remedy 
saved the child. 

With a dove-house both at his home and at 
his store, the merchant had many times, 
by exchange of messengers, accomplished the 
same swift communication in an emergency. 

Dr. Harvey J. Philpot, in the London Tele- 
graph, says that he constantly uses carrier- 
pigeons in his practice. They are a blessing 
to humanity, and he always takes a basket of 
them with him on his more distant visiting 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 179 

rounds, to save hours of precious time. A 
dispenser at his home office takes the prescrip- 
tion and fills it as soon as the bird arrives, 
and sends the medicine far quicker than if the 
physician had been waited for to go and re- 
turn. In critical cases he leaves a bird at the 
patient's house to be sent to him if he should 
be wanted. 

THE CHIRP OF A RIVER BIRD 

A letter of the Rev. M. F. Crewdson, a 
chaplain in the Boer War, relating his experi- 
ences in the English army, tells of the soldiers' 
misery from thirst after their battles, and how 
men cried to God who never prayed be- 
fore. Once, when hundreds, confused in their 
strange surroundings, were beseeching Him to 
show them where water could be found, the 
chirping of a bird was heard, and rushing 
towards the sound, they found the bird sitting 
on a bush over a broad stream. They had 
been guided to the Modder River. 

Many who thanked God for the first time 
in their lives believed that they had been 
divinely led, and that Heaven had sent a mes- 
senger in answer to their distressed cries. 

A FAMOUS GANDER 

In 1838, says Chamber's Journal, during a 
rebellion in Canada, two battalions of the 



180 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Coldstream Guards were sent from England, 
and took turns on picket duty in the country 
around Quebec. 

One of these sentries, stationed near a farm 
homestead, was surprised by the rushing of a 
goose between his legs, pursued by a hungry 
fox, which at the moment made a desperate 
grab at the fowl. The soldier saved its life 
by stabbing the fox with his bayonet. 

The grateful bird would never leave the post 
afterwards, but walked up and down with 
successive sentries placed there, as if to keep 
company, and aid in protecting the men. 
The "goose," in fact, was a very fine gander, 
and the garrison adopted him, and named 
him "Jacob." 

Some two months passed, and one winter 
night the soldier on duty, accompanied by the 
faithful fowl, heard a sound, and called "Who 
goes there?" but only silence followed, and 
after pacing back and forth a few times he 
"stood at ease" by the sentry-box. Mean- 
time two members of a party of skulking reb- 
els, intent on breaking through the lines, crept 
towards him on either side so near that one 
had lifted his knife when the gander rose in 
the air and flapped his wings furiously in the 
face of the would-be assassin. Astonished, but 
desperate, both men then made a blind rush, 
but only to fall by the sentinel's bullet and 



OUR WINGED HELPERS l8l 

bayonet. The other conspirators hurried for- 
ward, but the fierce bufferings of the gander's 
wings blinded them, and the soldier was able 
to keep them at bay till a detachment of 
the Guards, warned by the firing of his 
musket, appeared and put the hostile party 
to flight. 

The incident made "Jacob" the hero of 
the garrison, and they purchased a gold col- 
lar for him; and when the rebellion was over 
he went to England with them. Once in Lon- 
don the brave bird resumed his wonted walk 
with the sentries before the barrack gates, 
and learned to "stand at attention," and 
salute a passing officer. After a long life 
as one of the celebrities of the city, and a fa- 
vorite of all the neighboring children, he was 
run over by a driver's van, and died, though 
every effort was made to save him. 

In the Coldstream Guards' orderly room 
his head and neck, with the golden collar, 
are still shown over the inscription, "Jacob, 
Second Battalion. Died on duty." 

THE CHILD AND THE LARK'S NEST 

A writer in the Morning Star relates in 
its family column a notable providence that 
happened in a wheat-field. 

Much condensed here, the story is of a little 
girl who had run to the field to see her father's 



182 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

great horse-cradle go. Without seeing her, 
or knowing that she was anywhere about, he 
drove on, till he was half an acre away, and 
while he was gone she wandered into the tall 
standing wheat, and found a lark's nest with 
four young ones. She sat down by it, fasci- 
nated by the pretty discovery, and watched 
the blind bird-babies open their mouths for 
food. The wheat hid her completely, for it 
was higher than her head even if she had been 
standing up. The farmer drove his reaper 
round the broad field till he came near to the 
spot where his little daughter sat concealed in 
the tall grain, but noticing a bird fluttering 
over the wheat-tops a few feet ahead, he pulled 
up his horses, and watched her. Guessing 
there was a bird's nest there, he stepped down 
to investigate, for he was a tender-hearted man. 

Parting the standing grain, he walked into 
it a little way — and a sight met his eyes 
that nearly took his breath away. Stooping 
over the bird's nest utterly absorbed in her 
delight with the cunning cradle and its pets, 
crouched his own little daughter! If he had 
driven on, and swept over the spot with his 
cruel knives! — but he dared not think of it. 

Taking his child in his arms, he placed her 
in safety, and turned his team aside, leaving 
the grain uncut around the nest. Rapid 
sensations of mingled terror and reverence 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 183 

thronged through his mind, and for the mo- 
ment made him faint. "If that mother lark 
had not appeared just then! — If I had not 
seen her!" — and he trembled when he whis- 
pered, "God bless the birds!" 

A PARROT AND THE LUCK OF 
TARDEAU 

Immediately after the great Messina earth- 
quake, when the foreign correspondents on 
the spot were eager to send away the news 
for which the world waited, and the Italian 
ship to Naples (the only place open for quick 
dispatch) had suddenly decided to stop only 
at Leghorn — involving serious delay — the 
French correspondent, M. Tardeau, inter- 
viewed one of the Italian ministers attached 
to King Emmanuel's ship, Queen Helena, 
then ready to sail. He begged the minister 
to leave despatches at Naples. The minister 
made the desired promise, and then showed 
him a parrot which had been adopted by the 
queen, and told him its story. 

The bird had been buried in the ruins of 
a house at Messina, and a squad of soldiers 
searching among the wrecks heard a voice 
calling "Maria, Maria!" They dug for hours 
before they located it, but the call continued 
without cessation. At last, in a half-crushed 
room or chamber under the debris, they found 



1 84 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

this parrot. On the other side of a broken 
door and timber pile was " Maria," discov- 
ered and saved solely by the call of her bird. 

The king himself appeared while the story 
of the parrot which had so much interested 
his wife was being told, and was in his 
best mood when his minister introduced M. 
Tardeau to him, and mentioned the French- 
man's errand. He not only confirmed the 
consent already given to touch at Naples, but 
penned a personal telegram — one of the first 
to reach the European, English, and Amer- 
ican capitals. M. Tardeau's news was a 
national "scoop" for the French press, and 
naturally he made much of the bird-incident, 
describing in his best style the singular rescue, 
and how "he was introduced to the parrot 
and the parrot introduced him to the king." 

Queen Helena not only adopted the par- 
rot, but provided for "Maria." 

THE GOOSE AND THE BURNING BARN 

Some years ago the New York Press printed 
this incident of a fierce thunderstorm near 
Choconut Center, Pa. Mr. Henry Johnson 
owned a large gray goose, brought up by hand, 
which had become so fond of him that she 
would leave the flock at any time, and follow 
him around the farm. One day when a heavy 
thunder shower came up he hurried to put his 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 185 

horse in the stable, followed by the goose, 
but before he got away from the barn a light- 
ning stroke with a deafening crash of thunder 
smote the building and set it on fire. The 
goose flew to the house screaming, and ran flap- 
ping its wings back to the barn two or three 
times before the family understood her actions, 
for they had not seen the smoke; but quick 
feet very soon rushed to the doomed building 
and reached the unconscious farmer. He was 
not fatally injured, but the barn in a minute 
more was a roaring mass of flame. 

ELSA'S BULLFINCH 

In one of the Tyrolean valleys a little 
Austrian girl named Elsa lived with her 
grandfather, Herr Franz, who kept a tame 
bullfinch, which he had found motherless 
when hardly more than a fledgling, and given 
to the child for her pet. With his aid and 
advice she had trained the little creature, till 
after two or three years it could imitate sev- 
eral songs with amusing accuracy. But the 
one on which its teacher had expended the 
most pains, and with the best results, was 
"God save the Emperor." Elsa could not 
rest until the bird had it perfect. 

One Sunday the little girl and her grand- 
father, dressed in their best, started over the 
mountain to attend the feast at Imst, where 



186 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

a religious drama, according to annual cus- 
tom, was to be enacted, and carried the bull- 
finch with them in its cage. They put up at 
the house of a relative in the town, and the 
first day, after dinner, "Bullie" was let out 
of the cage, and exhibited its musical accom- 
plishments to the delight and wonder of the 
company. Melchior, a traveling merchant 
well-known through all the Tyrol villages, 
by chance had come to the house during his 
visit to the feast, and seeing and hearing the 
bird, was immensely pleased. It sat upon his 
finger, and sang its tunes. "My life! but it 
is a fine bird! A wonderful little creature," 
he said to Elsa and her grandfather. "I 
wouldn't mind giving you ten florins (a little 
over ten dollars) for it, Father Franz." 

The old man smiled, and shook his head. 
" Money wouldn't buy it, Friend Melchior. 
Thank you, but the bird is my little maiden's 
pet." 

Winter came a few weeks after, and a late 
flood had drowned Father Franz's two cows, 
and swept away his ripened crops, leaving 
him so discouraged and ill with his troubles 
that he could think of no way to turn for 
relief. Those were anxious days for Elsa. 
Food nearly exhausted; no milk to make 
cheeses, and sell for money; her grandfather 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 187 

in bed with prostrated spirits, and intermittent 
neuralgia. It is scarcely strange that the piping 
of her pretty bird reminded her again and 
again of Herr Melchior's offer. She kissed the 
tuneful pet, and wept over it. Finally, leaving 
her grandfather in the care of a kind neighbor, 
she said she must go to Imst and buy provi- 
sions, but she dared not tell him that the price 
of poor little Bullie must pay for them. 

Snow had fallen, and the path was heavy, 
but sadly the brave young girl, with her only 
treasure in her hand, set off over the moun- 
tain. Her venture was a rash one, but in those 
simpler times of slow travel and almost no 
mail communication, every risk must be taken 
in an emergency. The time of year was her 
only chance of finding the man she sought 
in that Austrian town, for she guessed that his 
winter quarters were there. 

Toilsomely across the mountain she made 
her way, till a mist confused her, and she went 
wide of the track. After wandering awhile, 
she knew she had lost her way, and sank down 
in the snow so tired that she soon became 
unconscious. How long she lay helpless she 
never knew, but two woodcutters, sent out by 
her grandfather (who was alarmed to find 
that she had taken the bird), came groping 
through the fog, fearing the worst. There 
were dangerous places on the mountain for 



188 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

straying feet. Suddenly they heard ' some- 
where in the still gloom, a familiar sound, and 
caught the muffled notes of the bullfinch sing- 
ing "God Save the Emperor!" A brief search 
brought them to where Elsa lay, in a dead 
sleep, while her brave little bird piped cheer- 
ily in its cage under the shelter of her cloak. 

Needless to say the story got abroad, and 
attracted sympathy and help to the suffering 
little household in the valley — and Elsa kept 
her bird. 

THE LOST DAUGHTER AND HER 
CANARY 

The New York Sun, in an early January 
number of 1886, printed a narrative in the 
same line with the above story, as to point 
and result, and the supreme importance of 
the help of a bird. 

The father in this trying drama of domestic 
misadventure, a German bird-dealer who had 
a store full of feathered pets, was the original 
narrator, and many a customer heard the 
details from beginning to end. 

"There is a bird up there that no money 
can buy," was the way he began the story, 
pointing to one of his caged attractions and 
whistling a bar of a curious foreign tune. The 
bird designated immediately took it up and 
finished it without a break. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 189 

"He can sing but one tune" said the man, 
"but I can tell you something about that." 
And the tale he told (if the stranger could 
wait) was one of the singular episodes of 
human fortune and affection. 

After the death of his wife the man moved 
to this country leaving his daughter in the 
old home, to be sent for as soon as he was 
able to provide a place. She owned a pet 
canary which she had taught to sing a tune of 
her own composing. In due time he sent 
money, and she embarked for America, but, 
by some mistake, took the wrong boat. Be- 
sides, before she arrived here, she lost her 
father's address. The restrictions in the way 
of a lone immigrant with slight credentials 
were less difficult than now, and though she 
saw nothing of her father, she was allowed to 
land with her little belongings — including 
the bird. 

Unable to find her at the boat in which he 
supposed she took her passage, the father 
first, after diligent inquiry, satisfied himself 
that she had come, and then began his painful 
search. Weeks were spent in fruitless hunt- 
ing, till he had no more money to hire official 
aid, or substitutes during his absence from the 
store, and then he practically gave up in de- 
spair; only on Sundays or at half-hours when 
he could afford to be away, he still forlornly 



190 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

haunted the streets of New York and espe- 
cially the locality where Germans lived. 

Wandering one day down Mulberry Street, 
he heard a boy whistle his daughter's canary 
tune! He stopped him with excited questions, 
and presently induced the boy to lead him to 
a tenement house where he said a woman lived 
who had a bird that sang the tune. In a little 
hall-bedroom, up several flights, he found the 
bird. There was no more doubt now; and 
when the woman he waited for came, her 
worn look and dress abated nothing of the 
eager welcome between father and child. She 
was faded, and distressingly poor, earning 
her scant living by scrubbing floors. Many 
tempting offers had been made to buy her 
bird, but she would never part with it. 

The happy reunion was indeed a Godsend 
to the German bird-merchant, to his daughter, 
and, not least, to the little canary that made 
it possible. The pretty songster, a member 
of the family again, was now almost wor- 
shiped. The man's injured business began 
to prosper, and the wee singer with its charm- 
ing story, long held the place of honor in his 
shop as the good angel of his trade. 

Too many forget that often, when an aching 
human perplexity cries to Heaven, "A bird of 
the air shall carry the voice, and that which 
hath wings shall tell the matter." 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 191 

There is almost "no end" of life-saving 
canary stories — like the case of the man and 
his wife in Lynn, Mass., awakened before 
daybreak on the morning of March, 17, 1908, 
by the cries of their pet birds smothering 
in the smoke of the smoldering mattress on 
which the couple lay; or the incident related 
in the Boston Transcript of the aged and blind 
canary which never sang save in bright sun- 
shine, and which awoke an astonished family 
in the night with a burst of song, enabling 
them to fight a blazing fire in the room and 
save themselves and the house; or the New 
York story of the saving of James E. Powers 
and his wife and baby by their canary's cry 
at three o'clock in the morning, from a twenty- 
five hundred dollar fire that destroyed their new 
cottage at the corner of the Quarry Road and 
181st Avenue; or the saving from ruin of the 
St. Philomena Institute in Brooklyn by the 
fluttering of a canary against the window of 
the assistant rector's room. But monotonies 
of truth are needless to enhance thankful 
admiration of these little helpers. One later 
and unique instance, however, that breaks 
the "monotony," was the aid rendered by 
these pretty birds in the rescue work after 
the terrible mine explosion at Cross Mountain, 
Tenn., in December, 191 1. As the quickest 
detectors of poisoned air, canaries were taken 



192 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

into the pit, and at their first danger sign 
men with oxygen helmets plunged into the 
deadly "damp" alone. They brought out 
and restored five men. Had more such aid 
been available, these five might not have 
been the sole survivors of several scores of 
victims. 

STANLEY AND THE GUINEA-FOWL 

Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer, 
in Scribner's Magazine, noted especially an 
incident of his situation when separated once 
from the majority of his party, and he and his 
few attendants were nearly starved. Stanley 
says he thought of Moses at the smitten rock 
in Horeb, and Elijah fed by birds at the brook 
Cherith, and wondered if the age of miracles 
was past. "Just then there was a sound of 
a large bird whirring through the air. We 
turned our heads, and that second the bird 
dropped beneath the jaws of Randy, my fox- 
terrier. ' There, boys,' I said, 'the age of 
miracles is not passed.'" 

The bird was a fine fat guinea-fowl, which 
was hurriedly dressed, roasted, and divided, 
and devoured by Stanley and his friends. 
The reader need not forget the credit due the 
active little dog — as Stanley did not, but 
saw that he got his share of the banquet. But 
the captor of the food did not bring it. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 193 

BIRDS HELPED ALEXANDER 

The ancient historian Arrian copies from 
Aristobulus, the Alexandrian philosopher, an 
account of the rescue of Alexander the Great 
when, on his return from his pilgrimage to 
the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, he lost his way 
in the desert. In his distress he saw two 
crows crossing in the sky and, following the 
direction of their flight, he found his way to 
safety. 

POLLY'S SCREAM 

Birds that learn to articulate are no better 
monitors, perhaps, but they figure more like 
human helpers, when their performances are 
told. A copy of the Boston Herald of Nov. 
8, 1909, mentions a fire that might have proved 
fatal at the house of Wm. B. Crafts, 81 Tuxeth 
Street, Brookline. He owned a parrot that 
proved its usefulness by giving the first alarm. 
In the night they heard it screaming "Fire, 
fire! police, police! O you kid, what are going 
to do now!" and suddenly wide awake but 
half stifled with smoke, the family rushed out 
of the house. Undoubtedly they saved their 
deserving feathered friend, though the item 
forgets to state it. 



194 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

JIMMY MYERS AND THE PIGEON 

It was a pet pigeon that probably saved the 
life of a small lad who lived on a farm near 
Hanover, Pa. 

Little Jimmy Myers, says the Louisville 
Post, met with a singular accident while 
climbing over a fence. A tangle of vines grew 
thickly close to the spot, and he slipped and 
tumbled among them so that they caught his 
feet when half-way over the fence, and held 
him there, with his head hanging down over a 
deep gully, unable to free himself. The pigeon, 
which had followed him as usual, seeing his 
condition and hearing his cries, flew back to 
the barn, and flapped about, and cooed in 
such an excited way that the boy's father 
followed it and found Jimmy who had already 
become unconscious. The timely warning 
saved him from serious if not fatal harm. 

THE PIGEONS OF PEKIN 

During the "Boxer" Rebellion of 1900 in 
China, one mystery amid the anxieties of the 
civilized world was the continued calmness 
and assurance of our secretary of state, the 
Hon. John Hay. The Mongolian insurgents 
with their savage watchword, "Exterminate 
the barbarians," had mustered in such num- 
bers that the foreign ministers, driven into 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 195 

defensive entrenchments in the City of Pekin, 
were in a state of siege, and in hourly danger. 
News that not only Christian missionaries had 
been slaughtered, but that the German Am- 
bassador had been put to death, thrilled the 
whole Christian world with horror; but through 
all the days of stress and pessimistic dread, 
Secretary Hay, in close counsel with Wu Ting 
Fang, the Chinese ambassador, maintained 
his serenity, and declared that the Chinese 
government had no part in the hostile move- 
ments of the "Boxers" or the sentiment of 
their race-hating war-cry. Their cruelties 
were the inevitable acts of an exaggerated 
riot. Millions complained. There were thou- 
sands who "knew" that all the foreign diplo- 
mats in Pekin had been or would be tortured 
and put to death, and they demanded why 
the United States did not "do something." 
Secretary Hay "knew," but he knew the 
truth. 

From May to July during which month the 
allied troops of Germany, Japan, England, and 
America came to the rescue, and captured 
Pekin, Mr. Hay had been continually receiv- 
ing information of the situation — not by 
human messengers, for that was impossible 
in that perilous time — but by birds of the 
air. Faithful natives had, indeed, volunteered 
to carry written tidings to the foreign camps, 



196 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

but were killed as soon as they broke through 
the cordon of fire around the Chinese capital. 

There were astute officials of the Chinese 
government who were well aware (as was the 
envoy Wu Ting Fang at Washington) that 
the success of the rioters meant the end of 
China as an empire. These mandarins, while 
forced to pretend sympathy for the "Boxers," 
kept a secret understanding with the foreign 
diplomats. It was through their connivance 
and resource that communication by carrier- 
pigeons was managed between the legation 
at Pekin and Tientsin, the head-quarters 
of the allied army. At first all the birds sent 
out fell a prey to the hawks, but the ingenuity 
of friendly native servants within the barricade 
changed all that by attaching to the tails of 
the birds light bamboo whistles which made a 
shrieking noise while rushing through the air 
and scared the hawks away. All that was 
needed then was to tie a finely written note to 
the little messenger's leg, and turn him loose. 

It was in this way that true information 
reached the foreign commanders, and, through 
them, their governments and the Chinese 
ministers abroad. Secretary Hay in Washing- 
ton knew what was going on in China, and the 
meaning of it; and his influence meantime pre- 
vented the threatened retaliation of the Powers 
of Europe, and gained him universal praise. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 197 

Undoubtedly he remembered his debt to 
the birds. 

(Condensed from Munsey's Magazine of June, 19 10.) 

WHAT AN ALBATROSS DID 

It is not certain that human life was saved 
by this grand winged creature, but the fact 
that on September 22, 1887, his dead 
body was found on the beach at Freemantle, 
Australia, with a message round his neck from 
some marooned sailors at the Crozet Islands, 
hundreds of miles south of Madagascar, 
proved that he had lost his life in carrying a 
call for help over nearly the half of "The 
Seven Seas." 

The writing scratched on a piece of metal 
said, 

"Thirteen shipwrecked sailors took refuge 
upon the Crozet Islands Aug. 4, 1887." 

The story of the strange "find" had been 
cabled by the governor of West Australia to 
the French government. A flight of even 
the strongest-winged creature across several 
thousand miles of uncharted ocean seemed 
incredible, but as the story was well authenti- 
cated, the French minister of marine dis- 
patched the transport Murthe from the Indian 
Ocean to the Crozet Islands in search of the 
shipwrecked crew. 



198 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Meanwhile the published account brought 
a letter from a commercial house at Bordeaux, 
saying that the thirteen men were evidently 
the crew of their long overdue three-master 
Tamaris. 

This apparent confirmation induced the 
British Government to order her Majesty's 
ship Thalia, bound for Australia, to turn 
aside, and join the search with the French 
vessel. 

The Murthe reached Cachous Island, one 
of the Crozet group, but found no sailors, only 
a heap of stones, in which, penciled on a scrap 
of paper, was an account of the wreck of the 
Tamaris, dated Sept. 30, 1887, and of their 
escape in two little boats, and told of their 
stay on shore till the food they had saved 
from the ship was exhausted and their depart- 
ure, at the date of the writing, in their boats 
for Possession Island (eighty miles away). 
The French transport followed them to that 
island, but found no trace of them. Unless 
picked up possibly by some American whaler 
the sad conclusion was that the thirteen men 
were lost at sea in their perilous boat-trip. 
Could they have known that eight days before 
they set out from the desolate rock in the 
ocean on their desperate cruise the bird they 
sent winging over the waters would finish his 
wonderful flight, and tell the world of their 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 199 

unhappy situation, they might have tried to 
prolong their lives where they were, on fish or 
the flesh and eggs of penguins. 

Few stories of the animal kingdom equal in 
pathetic interest the example of this bird of 
mighty wing whose fulfilment of the mission 
entrusted to him set two nations at work to 
rescue men in distress. 

(Condensed from the New York Sun.) 

A FLOCK THAT STOPPED A SHIP 

Captain Hendricksen of the Norwegian 
steamer Panan, after stopping at Cape Breton 
to recruit his coal supply, put out unwisely, at 
nearly night, into a stormy sea. The wind 
changed to landward, and threatened to blow 
the ship on one of the raggedest stretches of 
the Atlantic coast, and soundings were kept 
up for hours. Finding an easier keelway, the 
speed was increased, but while moving at 
eight knots, confident of being free of the land, 
the lookout shouted that he heard a sound like 
buzzing of millions of bees. 

The headway of the vessel was instantly 
checked, and the Panan was allowed to drift. 
The sound grew so loud that the volume of it 
could be heard distinctly above the roar of 
wind and sea. Nothing could be seen by 
captain or crew, but now and then they could 
make out an immense confusion of chirpings 



200 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

or cacklings, and flapping of wings. They 
were near some vast concourse of rock-dwelling 
sea-birds, possibly in some trouble over their 
night bivouac, but more likely roused by their 
quick instinct of something in the dark ap- 
proaching through the tempestuous sea. 

Captain Hendricksen dropped anchor, and 
rode out the night as well as he could. In the 
morning he faced an astonishing spectacle. 
Scarcely a quarter of a mile away towered a 
gigantic rock inhabited by myriads of great 
white birds. "It was their warning noise 
that saved the steamer," said the captain. 
A reckless sailor would have tried a shot at 
them, but the captain said "No." 

A LAME GOOSE AND A MORTGAGE 

A letter from Hamburg, Connecticut, to 
the New York World tells this story about 
Amos Holton and his lame goose. 

Amos Holton, an aged farmer living in the 
west part of New London County, at a place 
called "Short Willows," lost his wife and 
daughter. Alone in the world, his grief and 
affection were too strong for his wisdom, and 
in his desire to honor his dead, and measure 
their mortuary stone to his sense of their 
worth, he bargained with a marble-contractor 
for a rather costly monument, and gave him 
a mortgage on his little farm as security for it. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 201 

When the time the mortgage was to run 
approached its limit, Holton saw that he would 
not be able to pay, and was in sad straits over 
the situation. His neighbors found out his 
trouble, and subscribed money to enable him 
to keep his farm; but the sum fell short by 
about thirty dollars. The debt worried him 
for he could not trust the patience of his 
creditor too long, and a suit might mean the 
loss of his home after all. 

In the winter season Mr. Holton depended 
on his traps for his income, and one morning 
while he was out looking for mink and other 
game along Eight-Mile River, he heard a 
strange cry and the sound of a struggle, and dis- 
covered a wild goose, caught in a tangle of 
bushes, evidently a derelict from a late-going 
flock of migrators. One of the bird's legs had 
been shattered by a gun-shot. He took the 
goose home, and succeeded in healing its 
wounded limb, though it still remained a little 
lame, and placed the fowl in the farmyard pen, 
where it stayed contented, and without objec- 
tion on the part of his half-dozen domestic geese. 

In the spring the old man noticed one morn- 
ing that his wild fowl was missing. After 
it had been gone three days, he concluded 
that it had joined a night-flock of its own 
kind, and he should see it no more, but sud- 
denly the honk of wild geese near his house 



202 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

called him out to welcome his limping friend 
with twenty-five untamed associates. 

The new comers were shy, but soon became 
fearless, and in a couple of days were eating 
corn with the home flock. Presently the old 
farmer thought of his unsatisfied mortgage, 
and saw his opportunity. He carefully steered 
the thirty-two fowls into the pen, shut the 
shed door, and caught and tied the twenty-five 
strangers, one by one. Three days later he 
carried twenty-five dressed geese to market, 
and sold them for three dollars a piece. He 
came home with his seventy-five dollars, and 
paid up his mortgage. The gratitude of his 
lame goose had made him a free man. 

ACRES OF BIRD-MEAT 

Another illustration of fortuitous or heaven- 
sent supply of winged food, entirely outside 
the domestic comissariat, reminds us of the 
Israelites' feast of quails in the desert, when the 
Lord "rained flesh upon them as dust, and 
feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea." 

The Cincinnati Enquirer describes a phe- 
nomenon common, years ago if not now, at 
certain seasons, near Cedar Bluffs on the 
Cumberland River, and said to be "a sight 
worth going miles to see." It was the con- 
gregation of birds that every evening about 
sunset swarmed to the place and settled in 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 203 

droves on the cedar-trees till, many times, 
their vast numbers broke the branches. The 
association, too, of different and mutually 
hostile species gave the great assemblage a 
marvelous and millennial look, for hawk and 
dove roosted together like the prophetic lion 
and lamb lying side by side, and sparrow and 
owl met as friendly on the same bough as the 
leopard and kid of the Golden Age in one lair. 
The morning-light spectacle, when this great 
feathered convention from all the surrounding 
section flew away, is described as "a procession 
of winged song in all the colors of the rainbow." 
No mention is made of any wanton slaughter 
by human spectators at these wonderful en- 
campments, but of the countless crowds, 
thousands of wild food-fowls fell, involuntary 
offerings to needy hands, and yet their numbers 
never seemed to diminish. The narrator who 
witnessed this wonder on the Cumberland, 
writing from Somerset, Ky., says, "Very 
many poor people gain almost their entire 
support by catching and marketing these 
birds." 

MERLIN AND THE HEN 

In the Acts of the Synod of the Huguenot 
Christians, preserved by descendants of the 
remnant body who escaped the persecution of 
Charles XII, it is recorded that its moderator, 



204 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Merlin, chaplain to Admiral Coligny, owed 
the preservation of his life to a singular provi- 
dence. When the murderers were searching 
for Protestants through the capital and the 
kingdom, and his patron was killed in his own 
house, Merlin concealed himself in a haymow. 
During the three terrible days of the St. Bar- 
tholomew Massacre, and sometime after, he 
dared not leave his place, and he would have 
starved if a hen had not regularly laid an egg 
near his refuge. 

The tale is similar to the modern one related 
in Our Winged Friends, vouched for by a 
gentleman of Roxbury, Mass., — and certainly 
no more remarkable. 

A RAVEN LIKE ELIJAH'S 

Frederick William of Prussia, father 
of Frederick the Great, was a cruel king, who 
treated his own family with almost insane 
barbarity. Once, because his daughter was 
unwilling to break off a marriage contract with 
the Prince of Wales, and marry another prince 
to suit his whim, he locked her in her bed- 
chamber with her maid, and starved her on 
salt water soup, and occasionally a few unclean 
bones. 

She and her companion were famished, and 
almost reduced to shadows, when relief came 
— by no relenting of her unfeeling father, but 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 205 

by what seemed a miracle. A tame raven be- 
longing to some family in the neighborhood, 
came and tapped on her window one day, and 
when she opened it he held a slice of bread in 
his beak, which he dropped on the sill and flew 
away. The incident somehow got abroad, 
and created great sympathy for the imprisoned 
princess, and by the aid of some French 
refugees in Berlin who risked the wrath of the 
king, a way was contrived to convey a daily 
basket of provisions to her, and deliver it 
while compassionate sentinels turned their 
backs. 

AN OWL SAVED A TRAIN 

The Philadelphia Times of October, 1897, 
has an account by a Santa Fe railroad engineer 
of the mysterious way his train was saved 
in passing over a mountain track. Bound 
eastward the Overland on its dizzy road was 
pulling its load of passengers when a great 
horn-beaked owl dashed against the cab 
window, breaking the glass, and falling dead 
at the engineer's feet. 

Impressed by the incident he put out his 
hand instinctively and stopped the train, and 
a brakeman was sent ahead to look for danger. 
The man very soon came back. Only about 
a hundred yards in advance of the train a 
land-slide had covered the track just around 



206 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

a curve in the road. In a few seconds there 
would have been a sad accident — perhaps a 
fatal wreck. 

In clearing away the stones and earth the 
train hands found an uprooted tree under 
which, caught in its branches, lay another 
dead owl like the one that dashed into the 
cab. To serious inquirers the strange circum- 
stance seemed more than accidental. It 
looked as if the rescuing bird, terrified by the 
catastrophe that killed his mate, had sud- 
denly obeyed a voice in the air that cried, 
"Go back and warn the train!" and flew 
involuntarily to his martyrdom. 

A DUCK SHOWED THE WAY 

One of the countless stories of fog-bewil- 
dered travelers is told in The Outing by 
an Arctic adventurer. While hunting in 
King William's Land a dense mist fell and 
shut out all sight or sense of location or direc- 
tion. He was alone, and miles from his camp 
on the beach, and for a long time he wandered 
about by guess, growing more and more con- 
fused by the roughness of the inland wilder- 
ness and the sinuosities of the lake shore 
when an eider duck sprang up from her nest, 
and flew away in a straight line. Fortunately, 
he noted the direction she took, which was 
exactly a right angle to the way he was going. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 207 

Then he remembered that the nesting ducks, 
when frightened from their brooding places 
by him and his hunting party, had always 
steered for the water to join the drakes sitting 
along the edges of the floes or icecakes. Keep- 
ing his face carefully turned where the bee-line 
of the flying bird pointed, he struck out, and 
after a toilsome tramp found his camp and 
companions. Viewing his tracks next day, 
he saw that the way he was going in the fog 
when he scared the wild duck would have led 
him to deep water-holes, and possibly to fatal 
peril. 

A STRANGE BIRD PREVENTED A 
SUICIDE 

Birds were the ruling passion of Thomas 
Edward, and it was this enthusiasm that saved 
him at an hour when despondency had mas- 
tered his reason, and he was on the point of 
destroying himself. 

Half starved, driven to desperation by the 
indifference of the world to his writings and 
discoveries, and threatened with the seizure 
of his rare collections, the naturalist one day 
in a fit of insanity ran to the sea, intending to 
end his life under the waves. But professional 
instinct, cultivated by the habit of years, 
would not, even at that wild moment, let him 
pass the sight of a new specimen. Among 



208 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

the sanderlings on the shore an unknown bird 
of larger size challenged his observation, and 
his passion to study every feathered stranger 
would not allow him to look away. The covey 
flew as he approached, and lighted in another 
place; but he followed them. For an hour the 
same movement was repeated, and tracking 
them along the beach, he kept that strange 
bird in sight. Finally the covey flew out to 
sea; but Edward had lost all thought of suicide. 
Eager work in his loved vocation had brought 
him to himself. 

The winged creature that his eye had caught 
among the sanderlings was unlike any he had 
ever seen before — or ever saw again. It was 
the providential bird, that gave back Thomas 
Edward to a land too long ungrateful, till his 
genius made him one of the lights of science, 
and the pride of Scotland. 

DEAD BIRDS REVEALED A MURDER 

A Swiss story of the founding of the Abbey 
of Einsiedeln relates that in the ninth century 
a gang of freebooters robbed and assassinated 
the monk Meinrad while on his way as a post- 
carrier. Dying he warned them that God 
would avenge his death, for His birds would 
reveal their crime. Strangely, in an indirect 
way, his words came true. 

The robbers, sure of their secret, were bold 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 209 

enough to enter Zurich shortly afterwards, 
and while there at a certain inn, being served 
with two roasted wild fowls, one of them was 
heard to mutter jestingly to the others, " These 
birds won't tell on us — that's sure." A 
sharp waiting-maid who stood near the speaker 
caught the words, and the remark, coupled 
with the disreputable appearance of the men, 
excited her curiosity, and she gossiped about 
it. This found hearing in a responsible quarter, 
and led to swift pursuit — for the postman's 
non-arrival had already created surprise and 
speculation. 

In no long time officers of the law overtook 
and captured the suspects. Subsequent trial 
proved them to be the gang that robbed and 
murdered Meinrad; and soon after they all 
suffered the punishment they deserved. 

AN ADMONITORY COCK-CROW . 

In the Summer of 1796, when society in 
Ulster, Ireland, was completely disorganized, 
a poor woman was set down at an inn door 
with her baby and a trunk. As she sat waiting, 
evil-looking men eyed her trunk and muttered 
in Irish which, being a Derry woman, she 
could not understand. 

Supper was preparing and the landlord, who 
was sharpening knives at the table, was seen 
to nod and wink threateningly towards her. 



2IO THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Just then a cock strutted up to her and plucked 
her gown and crowed. 

"Wring his neck, the villain!" cried the 
inn-keeper to a servant, but the bird flew up 
into the rafters. As soon as the commotion 
was over he flew down again, and once more 
crowed and plucked the woman's gown. 
Alarmed by this time, she rose and said, "I'll 
go out and look about a bit till supper is ready. 
Please take care of my trunk." 

She left the inn with her baby in her arms, 
no one interfering with her, and walked till 
the trees hid her from sight, and then ran as 
fast as she could till she spied a party of yeo- 
men at work. Panting and nearly exhausted, 
she told them her trouble. It was a time when 
every house was liable to be entered and 
searched. There was armed authority enough 
in the vicinity to force an investigation, 
and the inn was thoroughly rummaged. 
Papers were found implicating the host in 
the rebellion; and other evidence in the shape 
of valuables on the premises showed that 
travelers had been robbed and made away 
with. 

The poor woman with her baby was con- 
ducted safely to the end of her journey, and 
did not return to Derry till the troublous times 
were over. She lived to tell her grandchildren 
how the crowing cock had saved her life. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 211 

INNOCENT NEGRO AND THE OSTRICH 

Rarely ever is help more eagerly coveted 
or more eagerly welcomed than by a falsely 
accused person who has no human friend to 
defend him. 

An English hunter tells this singular story 
of his experience on the Dark Continent. He 
was hunting in the Kalihari Desert, and had 
encamped with his party and their teams on 
the banks of the Vley. While the Kaffir 
servants stayed by the teams, he and a com- 
panion went out to shoot game for supper. 
Sighting a fine koodoo, he and his comrade 
at the same instant leveled their guns, but 
only the Englishman's gun "went off." As 
the antelope fell the Englishman sat down and 
with his screw-driver took off the hammer of 
his friend's disabled gun to examine the lock. 
Just then an excited Kaffir with a rifle in his 
hand ran up, saying that he had seen "three 
ostriches in the bush." 

Dropping the hammerless rifle and ordering 
the Kaffir to carry it to the camp, he snatched 
his own, and ran in the direction the negro 
pointed, followed by his fellow-hunter with 
the gun the servant brought. 

Darkness soon compelled them to give up 
the chase of the ostriches, and they traveled 
back to camp to feast on koodoo meat, and 



212 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

rest till morning. After supper the English- 
man took up his friend's rifle to finish his 
examination, but to his dismay the hammer 
and its screw were gone! The Kaffir had 
left them on the ground where the hunters 
shot the antelope. 

To an adventurer into the wild, hopelessly 
distant from civilization, hardly anything is 
more compulsory than his watch-care of his 
weapons and ammunition. The loss of the 
smallest accoutrement means hardship, and 
may mean helplessness; and the chances of 
loss are countless and perpetual. 

As soon as it was light the next morning the 
Englishman and the owner of the crippled 
gun visited the scene of the shot, but they 
searched in vain for the lost fittings. The 
search was continued, but without result. 
The rifle was a favorite, and many trophies 
were counted to its credit, and the accident(?) 
was a keen sorrow to the hunter who could 
not use it again. 

A reward was offered, and suspicion began to 
rest upon the Kaffir who carried back the 
damaged weapon. Finally the matter was 
left to the negroes — to earn the reward if 
they could; and the hunters set out again in 
chase of the ostriches. The two-toed tracks 
of the huge creatures were easy to follow, and 
they succeeded in running down the game and 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 213 

killing two. In the crop of one of them was 
found a lady's gold ring — and the lost gun- 
hammer and screw. 

There was no human being that could have 
proved the poor negro's innocence. A dead 
bird acquitted him. 

BATTLE OF THE SONG-BIRDS AND 
LOCUSTS 

We have often wondered if the destroying 
insects of Bible times were ever met and coped 
with by the birds of Bible times. Possibly, 
since the locusts, etc., came as a curse, and no 
repentance developed during the punishment, 
the Lord withheld the help of his feathered 
tribes. Or do the resources of mercy cover 
wider ground or less guilt now than in the 
ancient days? 

In an old number of the Utica Press a stirring 
account is given of a memorable combat in 
Hop-Hollow, near Alton, 111., during the 
visitation of the seventeen-year-locusts in 
1907, in which the birds were victors, though 
at terrible cost. 

The devastating locusts at first had every- 
thing their own way, not only devouring the 
orchards and forests, but driving the birds 
from their nests in the trees; and the defiant 
"Pha-raoh" of their wings reminded men of 
the plagues of Egypt as it sang their slogan of 



214 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

attack on every green thing that grew, if not 
on every feathered thing that flew. 

But the suffering and indignant songsters 
would not submit meekly, and they soon 
mustered their hosts from the whole surround- 
ing region, and swooped down one morning, 
when the locusts were dormant, killing millions 
of the swarming foe. For days from that 
time on the fight continued, and though 
thousands of the brave birds, fatally stung, 
fell shrieking to the ground, their onslaught 
was too fierce and too numerous to fail of 
full effect. 

Witnesses of the battle declared that the 
din of the strange forest war was "deafening," 
and the spectacle "a sight to see but once in 
a life-time." The ground was strewn with 
the dead, but the vast hordes of the invaders 
were fatally thinned, and finally routed, before 
they could complete their march of desola- 
tion. Then the birds returned in diminished 
but triumphant ranks, and rebuilt their nests, 
while their surviving allies flew back to their 
own homes. Songs were heard in the woods 
and orchards again, and the farmers' praise 
for their little winged warriors was as true as it 
was unpoetical: "They did a good job for us." 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 215 

HOW GULLS BECAME INSECT-EATERS 

The Mormons believe the gulls around Salt 
Lake were sent by Heaven to protect their crops, 
and, naturally, name them " Birds of God." 

This was the way of it, as told in an early 
number of the Deseret News. In the year when 
so many of the Western States and territories 
were overrun by grasshoppers, these birds 
suddenly appeared in great flocks all over the 
fields of Utah picking up and eating the billions 
of grasshoppers that were settling upon the 
crop. They saved the food of the people, 
and the gratitude of the Mormons made it a 
penal offence to kill a gull. This immunity 
seemed to transform these diving and fish- 
loving birds almost to a new race of do- 
mestic barn-fowls. They became everywhere 
the companions of the agriculturist, and 
Olive Thorne Miller, who went to see them, 
wrote in the Atlantic: "They follow the 
plow like a flock of chickens . . . seeking 
out and eating greedily all the worms, grubs, 
larvae, and mice and moles disturbed in the 
furrows." 

Though the gulls are no longer wild but 
tame, and their lives are fallen in pleasant 
places on shore, they have an island home in 
the lake which they love, and to which they 
resort when the season of war on the farmers' 



2l6 THE BIRDS OFGOD 

enemies is over, and feed on the fish brought 
down by the fresh-water streams and strangled 
in the salt waves — a service as beneficent to 
man as their newer insect-appetite; for the 
dead fishes, undisposed of, would become 
offensive, and taint the air to the injury of all 
neighboring inhabitants. 

A GALLANT GAME-COCK 

A bird trained by the human lust for spec- 
tacular cruelty to a trade of battle and blood 
can, on occasion, play a more excusable role 
outside of the gambling pit. 

In the victorious sea-fight of Lord Howe 
with the French fleet off Ushant, June I, 
1794, the captain and crew of the British gun- 
ship Marlborough owed their laurels to a bird 
of this class. Captain Berkeley, during the 
battle, ordered all the live stock on board 
the Marlborough to be thrown into the sea, 
and rashly drove his ship between two French 
frigates and engaged them both. The sailors 
had prevailed upon the captain to spare an 
old game-cock that had been present in several 
successful marine combats, and was considered 
a mascot by the men. 

The Marlborough was so terribly handled 
by the two frigates that half her crew were 
disabled, and her mainmast was shot away, 
but at the moment the crippled ship, with 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 217 

her guns silenced, was about to strike her flag, 
the old game-cock hopped upon the stump of 
the mast, flapped his wings, and crowed so 
vociferously that everybody on board heard 
it through the deadly tumult. The crew, 
including even the badly wounded, raised a 
loud cheer and rushed back to man the guns 
again; and they fought with so much vigor 
and effect that the batteries of both opponents 
were silenced, and the French flag instead of 
the British went down. 

A silver medal, struck by order of Captain 
Berkeley, was hung around the neck of the 
veteran bird, and he passed the rest of his 
days in honorable retirement in the parks at 
Goodwood. 

THE BATTLE-BIRD OF THE SARATOGA 

A companion tale to the above is of an 
incident during the Battle of Lake Champlain, 
Sept. 11, 1814. .It was copied, in Niles' 
Weekly Register, from the Burlington, Vt., 
Centinel, issued soon after the fight. 

In the hottest part of the action, when the 
cannonade from the British frigate was mak- 
ing awful havoc on the American flagship 
Saratoga, a cock, escaped from one of the 
broken coops, flew into the rigging, and 
crowed three times. The carnage on board 
had nearly unmanned several battery-pieces, 



218 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

so that more than once Commodore Mac- 
donough himself had to serve a gun, and the 
sick galley was almost full; but at the signal 
of the brave rooster in the shrouds the crew- 
hurrahed " Victory! Victory!" and the Sara- 
toga and her sister ships fought the battle 
through to a final triumph. 

ANOTHER ROOSTER STORY 

A reporter of the New York Tribune gives 
it as the admiral told it himself. 

Admiral Jowett, when a naval lieutenant 
in the Civil War, and commander of the 
Montgomery, was cruising off the Louisiana 
coast watching for blockade-runners in a fog. 
Walking up and down the deck with the officer 
of the mid-watch, he heard a rooster crow. 
He stopped and listened. He could see 
nothing. The officer evidently had heard 
nothing. 

"Any fowls on board?" Jowett inquired. 

"No, sir." 

"Didn't the boats bring off any yester- 
day?" 

"I think not," replied the officer. 

"Well, I heard a rooster crow. A blockade- 
runner has gone out. Call all hands. Make 
sail for Havana. Send word to the engineer 
to give me all the speed he can, and send extra 
men to the fire-room." 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 219 

The under-officers thought the commander 
crazy, but there was nothing to do but obey 
orders. The Government ship was off at 
once on the blind chase, most of the men either 
anathematizing the commander's "nonsense" 
or silently wondering what the new movement 
meant. 

But at half past seven in the morning the 
fog lifted and showed a schooner full-rigged 
ahead of them flying the pelican flag (of 
Louisiana). The Montgomery overtook and 
ranged alongside of her, and thirty armed 
marines stood at the capstan aiming at 
the captain and sailors on the deck of the 
stranger. 

"Haul down that flag!" shouted Lieutenant 
Jowett. The captain of the blockade-runner 
expostulated, but the order was repeated, and 
down came the pelican flag. 

"I heard your rooster crow, and I've come 
to get him," said the lieutenant. 

"I'll wring his neck first!" snarled the angry 
skipper. 

"No you won't; he is mine by right of 
capture," called Jowett. 

And so it had to be. And of course the 
rooster and the runaway vessel that carried 
him, with all its contents, fell a prize into the 
hands of the National Government. 

The rooster probably did not know which 



220 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

side his crowing helped, but he, at least, en- 
forced obedience to the laws of war. 

TIMELY GIFT OF A DEAD RAVEN 

Mr. Spurgeon, in the "Sword and Trowel," 
told an incident in the life of a pious German 
of Wuppenthal. Few who know the passion 
of a tame crow for all bright-looking articles 
will cavil at the tale of his big brother, and the 
booty in his crop. 

During a season of scarcity, when dull 
business had forced many factories to suspend 
work, a poor weaver was dismissed. His 
master would not take him back. In his 
distress, for he was dependent on his daily 
labor, he tried in vain to find something to do, 
and then could only seek hope and comfort in 
the thought that "the Lord would provide." 

A time came when he and his wife had no 
bread, and not a penny left. As he sat by 
an open window, one of the street gamins 
who had often made fun of his piety, passed 
by and apparently overheard his low voice 
invoking divine help. The boy had picked up 
a dead raven killed by accident or malice, and 
a temptation to play a "good joke" seized him. 

"Here, saint!" he yelled, "Here's something 
for you to eat!" and flinging the dead raven 
into the window, he scampered away without 
being recognized. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 221 

The weaver took up the lifeless creature, 
and stroked its glossy feathers. As his hand 
passed under its neck he felt a hard substance, 
and on dissecting the flesh he found a beautiful 
gold necklace. 

"The Lord provides," he said to his wife, 
who stood speechless. 

The next thing to do, he decided, was to go 
to the nearest goldsmith. The jeweler gave 
him two thalers to supply his needs, pending 
the discovery of the loser of the necklace. 

The handsome trinket was cleaned and 
examined and recognized, and when the poor 
finder called again, the goldsmith told him he 
had identified it. 

It belonged in the family of the very man 
who had discharged him. The weaver carried 
it back, and the sight of the precious chain 
rejoiced a whole household, and removed 
suspicion from an honest servant. The relent- 
ing master gave the poor man a rich reward, 
and restored him to his old place among his 
workmen. 

THE RAVEN AND THE RING 

In a village near Warsaw a peasant named 
Dobrey, through poverty and loss of employ- 
ment, fell behind in his rent, and was notified 
that he would be turned into the street with 
his family. The day before the threatened 



222 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

eviction he and his household were sitting 
down to what might be their last meal under 
shelter, when Dobrey, who was a devout 
Lutheran, feeling that every human resource 
was exhausted, began to repeat Paul Ger- 
hardt's hymn, 

"Commit thou all thy griefs," etc. 

and as he came to the lines, 

"When Thou wouldst all our needs supply, 
Who then shall stay Thy Hand?" 

There was a knock on the window. The family 
looked and saw an old friend, a raven that 
Dobrey's grandfather had raised from a fledg- 
ling to a full-grown and intelligent pet, and 
had set at liberty when he died. Dobrey 
opened the window, and the bird hopped in 
and laid down a gold ring set with precious 
stones. 

In the first flush of joy the thought of selling 
the jewel, and the sum it would bring, was 
uppermost, but Dobrey soori decided to show 
it to his minister. The minister knew at once 
by its crest that it was one of King Stanis- 
laus' gems — probably an heirloom of several 
generations. He took it to the king, and the 
king sent for Dobrey, learned his situation, 
and rewarded him so generously that he was 
no more in need, and the next year built him 
a house of his own, giving him cattle also from 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 223 

the royal herd. Over the door of the new 
house was placed an iron tablet with a raven 
holding a ring in his beak, and under it a verse 
from Gerhardt's hymn. 

A RAVEN AND A DANGEROUS DINNER 

The thieveries of these black fellow- 
creatures, however serio-comic they may 
seem, have many times not only relieved 
human poverty but saved human lives. 

Years ago several men working in Winsaide 
Quarry near Kingsbridge, Devon (England), 
sat down to eat their dinner, when a sly raven 
stole near and snatched one hungry laborer's 
lunch-basket, and flew away with it. All the 
men rushed out to chase the bird, and they 
were no sooner gone than the roof of the 
quarry fell in. 

After that no one of them should have 
needed the advice in Luke to "consider the 
ravens." 

A BLIND WOMAN'S GANDER 

In an old copy of the Christian at Work (now 
the Christian Work and Evangelist), "The 
Talker" quotes the following among many 
instances of "Animal Intelligence." 

An aged blind woman was always present 
at church on Sunday, but it was the care of a 
feathered helper that guided her there. One 



224 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

day the minister called at her daughter's 
house for a pastoral visit (why the daughter 
did not guide her mother to church herself, 
and was not expected to, is a question perhaps 
not worth guessing). 

Not finding his venerable parishioner, he 
was told that she was out. 

"Why, I shouldn't think you'd trust her 
out alone," he said. 

"Oh," replied the daughter, "mother isn't 
alone. The old gander is with her." 

On Sundays this gander walked solemnly to 
church with his blind mistress, holding a 
pinch of her gown in his beak, and never left 
her till he saw her seated, or taken in charge 
by the sexton. During service he remained 
close by feeding on the grass in the church- 
yard, and when the worship was over he came 
at her call and guided her home. 

One would imagine that a meeting-house 
with such a feature in its regular attendance 
would seldom lack a full congregation. 

A PARROT'S WORD FOR IT 

Mrs. Phillippa Cortiole, an Italian- 
American, on her return by the liner San 
Giorgio from a visit to her native country, 
was detained at Ellis Island with her parcels, 
and a pet bird in a cage. The reason was that 
she knew scarcely a dozen English words, 



~& 




BALTIMORE ORIOLE 

(Upper Figure, Male; Lower Figure, Female) 

Order- Passeres Family- Icteric 

Species — Galbula 



Genus — Icterus 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 225 

though she contrived to assure her examiner 
that she had lived in America twenty-four 
years, mostly in Cleveland, O. The inspector 
was about to hold her for the Board of Special 
Inquiry, and was sitting down to write the 
order, when a voice said distinctly, "Cut that 
out." The officer looked about him but saw 
no human speaker, and took up his pen. 

"Cut that out!" commanded the voice. 

Mrs. Cortiole laughed. "Das all right," 
she said, and with some effort she signified 
that her home had always been in an Italian 
section of the city, but (pointing to the bird) 
"He, he Americano. I buy him where he live." 

"Your parrot vouches for you," said the 
inspector. "Pass on." 

POLLY AND THE TRAMP 

The Atlanta, Ga., Journal tells how a lady 
of that city entertained a bevy of children 
with the story of a good turn done her by 
a handsome tame parrot which they were 
admiring and praising. 

She had an aged uncle living with her, who 
was feeble, and spent most of his time in the 
sitting-room reading, or asleep in his chair. 
When she called him to dinner, she spoke very 
loud (for his ears were dull even when awake), 
"Uncle Dan! Uncle Dan! You're wanted." 

One morning the lady was alone in the house 



226 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

clearing off the breakfast table, when, in answer 
to a loud knock, she stepped to the kitchen 
door and saw a dirty and sturdy-looking 
beggar who, of course, asked for something to 
eat. Before she could reply he pushed his 
way in, and sat down at the table. Looking 
round at the few relics of a breakfast in sight, 
he turned up his nose when she told him he 
was welcome to what was left. Most of the 
eatables had been carried down cellar, and she 
did not intend to go down and leave him there 
alone. 

The tramp banged his fist on the table, and 
vowed he would have a good hot breakfast. 
She was alarmed, and was on the point of 
slipping out to call a neighbor, when Polly in 
the next room, disturbed at the stranger's 
loud talk, cried out "Uncle Dan! Uncle Dan! 
You're wanted!" 

The startled tramp looked around nervously, 
and the next second he had scrambled up and 
out of the house. The voice of a child, he 
evidently believed, had called a man to the 
lady's rescue. The sudden change in her 
caller from insolent arrogance to cowardly 
fear, and his quick and clumsy retreat, pro- 
voked her to laughter, and she went and fed 
Polly with a special treat of bread and honey. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 227 

THE GUAKO HAWK 

We have never heard that cinchona, or 
Peruvian bark, was discovered to the world 
by a bird, but a specific if not prophylactic, 
quite as useful, though mostly called for in 
hot latitudes, is the guako leaf; and its virtues 
as an antitoxin were known to birds possibly 
ages before men heard of the plant. 

The first human knowledge and report of 
its value can be credited, perhaps, to a couple 
of Caracas Indians who watched the move- 
ments of a gavilan or snake-eating hawk: 
These two Indians, while hunting, heard the 
hawk's drawling scream, "goo-aw-ko, goo-aw- 
ko," and saw it descend to a small tree, like 
a water-willow, near the bank of a stream. 
They waited, expecting it to rise with a snake 
in its talons, but approaching nearer, they were 
surprised to see it clinging to a branch and 
eating the leaves. The curious sight of a 
hawk eating vegetable food was enough to 
hold their attention till the bird flew again. 
Circling in the air awhile, the hawk suddenly 
plunged down and pounced upon a serpent. 
The yells of the Indians as they ran forward 
frightened the captor, and the snake dropped 
to the ground. They looked, and knew it to 
be a cascabel, one of the most venomous 
reptiles that infest equatorial America. Rea- 



228 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

soning that the hawk had eaten the leaves as 
a preventative of harm from its deadly bite, 
they not only ate some themselves, but told 
the story to their tribe. Faith in the antidote 
was slow to spread till a native, who had 
recently swallowed the juice of the supposed 
magic willow, was bitten by a fer de lance 
and suffered no injury. In time other 
proofs beyond question made belief universal 
throughout Venezuela and the neighboring 
islands. 

An English scientist of great courage and 
professional enthusiasm, traveling on the 
Caribbean coast, heard of the specific, studied 
it, ate the leaves, and dared to submit his 
flesh to the bite of the cascabel and the 
coral snake. He suffered no harm; he 
wrote an account of his intrepid experiments, 
which was printed in No. 413 of Chambers 9 
Journal. 

Armed with the long lance-like leaves (or 
the extract) of the guako tree — so called 
from the cry of the hawk — a person among 
people ignorant of the secret is thoroughly 
equipped for a "snake-charmer." The Carib- 
bean natives never travel without a supply of 
the precious medicine. The name will never 
let them forget the little hawk whose instinct 
the Creator made a human benefit. 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 229 

SAM HOUSTON'S BIRD OF DESTINY . 

The one hundredth anniversary of Gen. 
Sam Houston's birthday was celebrated by 
the State Legislature of Texas, March 2, 1893, 
and a memorial address was delivered by the 
Rev. Rufus C. Durleson D.D., LL.D. In his 
address he related the following incident in 
the life of this remarkable man. 

In the heyday of his early renown, driven 
to desperation by domestic unhappiness and 
the vile railleries of envious political enemies, 
he suddenly resigned the governorship of 
Tennessee, and exiled himself among his old, 
half-savage friends, the Cherokees of the 
Southwest. 

While descending the Cumberland River in 
a New Orleans boat, on his way to his goal 
of self-banishment, an intolerable horror of 
sudden despair and gloom, intensified by mis- 
givings of remorse, seized him as he walked 
the deck, and impelled him to leap from the 
boat and put an end to his life, when a large 
American eagle swooped down near his head, 
and with a loud scream soared away, disappear- 
ing in the last light of the sunset. 

Houston was startled. He was as firm a 
believer in auspices as the old Romans were, 
and he accepted the eagle's visit as a sign from 
Heaven. From that time he knew (as he said) 



230 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

that his career was not ended, and that a 
grand duty and glorious destiny awaited him 
in the years to be. 

Time fulfilled the prophecy when he avenged 
the terrible defeats of the Alamo and Goliad, 
and became the savior of Texas. 

THE OWL OF KING'S CHAPEL 

Song and sacrifice maintain the balance of 
bird existence. The Creator ordained for 
certain species of his feathered creatures the 
same liberty to be flesh-eaters that He gave 
to man. Like the leader and paragon of the 
animal creation the predatory fowls have their 
primitive excuse to do what the Voice told 
Peter to do in his housetop dream. 

In the churchyard of old King's Chapel 
on Tremont Street, Boston, English sparrows 
swarm every winter, and make the place their 
regular resort till April. A March number of 
the Boston Journal, 191 1, remarking on their 
immense numbers in the ancient cemetery 
that year, noted half humorously that so great 
an invasion had not signalized the history of that 
city since its occupation by the British army. 

A huge northern owl saw and seized the 
opportunity to board himself at the tombstone 
aviary, and his havoc among the birds so 
reduced the surplus of the fluttering colony 
that friends of the city who disliked English 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 231 

sparrows welcomed him as a timely guest, 
and a suggestive model for municipal reformers. 
For several weeks the sharp-beaked execu- 
tioner continued to thin the ranks of the 
chattering graveyard population, and then 
disappeared, leaving hundreds of vacancies 
among the elms of the street-side and the 
trees of the Common for singing birds to come 
and occupy if they would. 

HENS THAT STARTED A COLLEGE 

Dwight Moody, after his return from his 
great evangelistic campaign in England, visited 
his mother, and found her in trouble with a 
neighbor who complained of her hens. They 
ranged over a good part of his farm, and rioted 
in his fields and gardens. 

Mr. Moody, intent on a mission of peace, 
proposed to the disquieted neighbor that he 
sell to him the lots over which the hens were 
in the habit of wandering and doing mischief, 
but the man told him he would sooner sell his 
whole farm than a part of it. Moody medi- 
tated awhile, and inquired his price. The 
neighbor finally named a figure, and the 
evangelist, after some mental calculation, 
drew his check for the amount. His mother's 
flock of Minorcas and Plymouth Rocks could 
roam over their favorite acreage of freedom, 
and feed and scratch without interference. 



232 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Only a fortnight after this transaction Mr. 
Moody, while riding over his new domain, 
and wondering what he should do with it, 
noticed on the hillside, near the edge of his 
farthest pasture, a little cottage where a mother 
and her two daughters sat in the doorway 
braiding palm-leaf hats. » The sight impressed 
him, and inquiry revealed the fact that these 
poor but cheerful toilers supported themselves 
and a paralyzed husband and father by their 
hand labor. He remembered his own early 
limited privileges, and what he had just seen 
realized to him the struggle of the unskilled 
manual workers to live, and how great a handi- 
cap intellectual neglect could be. He rode 
on, reflecting on the condition of so many 
youth, especially young girls like these poor 
hat-braiders, who could never enjoy any 
advanced schooling with their scanty resources; 
and eventually a thought and the outline of 
a plan to help them took form in his mind. 
He would devote his ample grounds to free 
education, or opportunities of culture for 
pupils with the narrowest means. 

He built an academy or boarding-school 
for girls, that would accommodate fifty stu- 
dents. That was the beginning. Wealthy 
friends became interested, and two years 
later a seminary for boys was erected. Other 
buildings were added, and on the beautiful 



OUR WINGED HELPERS 233 

Northfield highlands by the Connecticut rose 
the famous Mt. Hermon College. 

It was almost an accident that made the 
great evangelist the owner of a farm. But 
for the wanderings of dear old Mother Moody's 
hens, by which he became lord of its soil, 
who will say that the hint would ever have 
come to germinate there, like the prophet's 
"handful of corn," and by and by "shake 
like Lebanon?" 

A BIRD RAILROAD SURVEYOR 

"There is a path that no fowl knoweth,"says 
Job, but more than once some fowl of the air 
has pointed a way that no man knoweth, and a 
door that human wit or patience could not find. 

In 1865 the Canadian Government sent 
out Walter Moberly, an experienced pros- 
pector, to search for a wagon route to the 
Pacific. For many days he tried to discover 
an opening through the Gold Range, but was 
about giving up in despair when he espied 
an eagle flying up a narrow valley or glen. 
He followed the direction the bird took, and 
discovered the only pass which penetrates 
the wall of the mountain. 

The Canadian Pacific Railway runs through 
it now, and instead of Moberly Pass it is 
named Eagle Pass in grateful memory of the 
providential bird. 



234 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

HOW BIRDS MAKE LAND 

There is no little poetry in the economy of 
Nature, as it affects mankind; and much of 
it is supplied by the birds. One curious in- 
stance is the way they make deserts blossom 
in the sea. 

It is chiefly through them that vegetable 
and fruit seeds find their way to the bare coral 
islands, and there, as soon as the jetsam of 
the ocean has rotted to soil upon the rock, 
they germinate and clothe the wastes with 
beauty and plenty. Then these blooming 
places invite not only admiring visitors, but 
actual colonization, and in almost countless 
cases have become gardens of human homes. 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 

"Come hear the woodland linnet 
How sweet his music! On my life, 
There's more of wisdom in it! 
And hark, how blithe the throstle sings; 
He, too, is no mean preacher." 

Wordsworth. 

Sermon I. FAITH IN PROVIDENCE 

BISHOP HALL tells of a poor but God- 
fearing man who sat gloomily by his 
window in a fit of discouragement. The 
music of a singing robin in a neighboring tree 
would have affected many in like mood very 
much as specified in Prov. 25:20, but though 
it continued for a considerable time, it diverted 
rather than irritated the melancholy man, 
till he listened with a feeling of growing grati- 
tude. 

"Pretty bird," he murmured half to himself, 
"how cheerfully you sit and sing — and yet 
you know not where you will get your next 
meal; and at night you must shroud yourself 
in a bush for your lodging. What a shame 
that I, a Christian, with God's promises for 
my possession, should droop and repine! 
Cannot He make windows in heaven? Can- 
not He set a table in the wilderness?" 



236 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Dr. Francis E. Clark heard Dr. Geo. C. 
Adams in San Francisco characterize the text, 
"Your Heavenly Father feedeth them." 

"This is no warrant for laziness," the 
speaker said. "The birds of heaven do not 
turn day into night and night into day, like 
our votaries of wealth and fashion, but they 
get up early, and work till sunset. They 
are entirely self-supporting. They build their 
own houses, furnish their own material, find 
their own food, and feed their own young. 
God feeds them from Nature's table, but 
they take pains to find the feed." 

Dr. Adams made one slight error, however, 
when he excepted canaries and other caged 
birds by saying, "They are not birds of 
heaven." Under the All-Provider, human 
hands are Providence to the "captive" pets. 
They are birds of heaven "located" — and no 
less heavenly for that; any more than a 
"located" Methodist minister is less a 
Methodist minister. 

II. "DESCENDING LIKE A DOVE" 

One Sunday, in the month of August, 1885, 
a dove flew through an open window of a 
church in Danbury, Ct., and perching on a 
gas-fixture just above the pastor's head, re- 
mained there till the doxology was sung. 

Only a month later the New Haven Journal 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 237 

and Courier reported a similar but more notable 
incident in an East Haven Congregational 
church on Communion Sunday. A pet dove, 
belonging to a family in the village, appeared in 
the church at the close of the prayer preceding 
the sermon, and lit upon a side-gallery not far 
from the pulpit, cooing softly as the minister 
read the first chapter of the Gospel of John. 
When he came to the 3 2d verse and read 
"I beheld the Spirit descending like a dove 
out of heaven," the bird flew to him and 
perched on the Bible directly between his 
hands. At the second singing service it flew 
circling over the heads of the choir, and then 
returned to settle on the pulpit platform, where 
it remained during the sermon. 

When the minister closed the Bible, and 
stepped down to lead in the sacramental service, 
the dove flew up and stood on the Bible a 
moment, cooing, hopped down and back three 
times, and then nestled close to the side of 
the great Book at rest, till at the close of the 
communion ceremonies the pastor made a 
few fitting observations, and mentioned the 
winged visitor, and the potential significance 
of its presence there. Might not the bird 
be the emblem of the Spirit's presence in the 
church, as at the baptism in Jordan? Im- 
mediately the dove flew from the pulpit, and 
lit upon the pastor's head. 



238 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

It was a remarkable climax; and eyes that 
had smiled at the movements of the little 
creature grew wet as they saw this crowning 
act. The pastor gently lifted the bird from 
his head and held it to his breast as he pro- 
nounced the benediction. 

III. "HOW AMIABLE ARE THY 
TABERNACLES" 

A young lady of Newton, Mass., while on 
a summer visit to Maine, witnessed a peculiar 
feature in the Sabbath assembly at a village 
meeting-house, which rebukes desultory church- 
goers, as well as habitual absentees. 

She heard a cooing sound above the singers' 
seats, and discovered a white dove perched on 
the top of the organ. The bird seemed to 
attract no one else's notice, and she learned 
on inquiry afterwards that it had been a 
regular attendant there for eight or ten years. 
Charmed by the song-worship in the sanctuary, 
the dove had begun to come and kept it up 
on Sundays, as if listening to psalms and 
hymns once a week were a necessary part of its 
existence — and between it and the janitor and 
people there was evidently a perfect under- 
standing. The little feathered parishioner (a 
pet of a neighboring lady) was twelve years old 
(when the narrator saw it), a tabernacle satel- 
lite of exemplary devotion, enjoying the Sun- 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 239 

day-school as well as the church service, 
conducting itself always with beautiful pro- 
priety — and never kept away by bad weather. 

IV. A TEXT FOR AN ATHEIST 

Like a sequel to the story of the guako tree 
in "Our Winged Helpers," the following item 
from the Church Union describes the saving of 
a prodigal by the inspired act of a bird. The 
field-sermon had but a single listener, and but 
for him the incident and its result would never 
have been heard of; for the narrator was him- 
self the " congregation of one." 

Left a comfortable fortune by his father the 
young man squandered the bulk of it in riotous 
living, and then ran away from New York 
City, where a career of unholy pleasure had 
nearly wasted his health. 

In a South American town to which he had 
made his way with the idea, probably, of 
recuperating his strength, he was noted as a 
foreign wanderer and sportsman, and even the 
observation of strangers could mark him as a 
disgusted voluptuary who had cut himself 
loose from all social and moral anchorage. 

Out on one Lord's Day with his gun, he 
tramped over the country till fatigue obliged him 
to sit down and rest. Presently the screaming 
of a bird attracted his attention to a tree close 



240 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

by, and he saw at once that a snake climbing 
towards her nest was the cause of her alarm. 
Too weary and indifferent to attempt rescue 
or help he lay and watched. The reptile 
came nearer and nearer, intent no doubt on 
devouring eggs or nestlings, when suddenly 
the bird's mate appeared with a tuft of fresh 
leaves in his bill, and spread them quickly 
over the nest. The snake approached till 
it saw the leaves, but instantly shrank back 
and glided rapidly down the tree. 

The novelty of the strange object-lesson 
caught the young degenerate's attention. 
Surfeited with life's best and worst, and at 
odds with both heaven and earth, he had 
found something that interested him. He 
went back to his quarters, thinking it over. 
How did that bird know — how did the first 
bird that ever knew it know — that a certain 
kind of leaves would frighten snakes away? 
How did the hint, the intelligence, the intui- 
tion, the — whatever it was, get into the first 
bird's head? Discarded reflection, dead moral 
sensibility, began to awake as the questions mul- 
tiplied, and carried him back to the thought 
of the Creator. It was not profanity this time, 
when "God Almighty!" burst from his lips. 

The answer was there, and he felt it. The 
same Power that inspired the bird with self- 
protective intelligence had smitten his reckless 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 241 

heart with a picture-text. Remorseful and re- 
pentant, the prodigal went home to the land of 
his fathers to serve as best he could the Being 
whom he had repudiated and blasphemed. 



V. THE ONLY GOD 

Strangely curious is the description of the 
Nile curlew by William C. Prime, in his book 
"Boat Life on the Nile." 

When not far from Abou Simbal he shot 
one of those birds without knowing that the 
Arabs consider it almost sacred. To them it 
is the winged preacher of monotheism, and its 
only cry is an orison to the Almighty. As 
Mr. Prime copies the Arabic the words are 
"El moulk illak, la shareek illak " (The universe 
is Thine: Thou hast no partner). The author 
adds: "The cry is remarkably distinct and 
musical, and we heard it all the evening in 
the twilight across a waste of halfeh grass 
which marked the position of a forgotten city. 
I know of no more impressive picture on all 
earth's surface than this bird standing erect 
in the gloaming on a mound that covered the 
palace of a long-forgotten king, and uttering 
on the desert wind that simple and sublime 
tribute of praise to Him who alone knew the 
history of the dead that lay below." 



242 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

VI. THE WISER FRIEND 

The Woman's Missionary Magazine quotes 
the experience of a gentle Christian lady who 
found profit in her own sorrow from a little 
passage in bird-life that made her interference 
with it seem cruelty instead of kindness. Two 
sweet little birds were building their nest in 
the rosebush under her window-sill. Pleased 
to have them near her, she knew, nevertheless, 
that the place was most unhappily chosen for 
anything like security from disturbance or 
even from peril to the innocent builders, and 
she destroyed their pretty preparations, though 
she had to stifle every tender feeling that 
forbade the act. 

It was pitiful to see the surprise and dis- 
appointment of the little birds, and a still 
greater trial to watch them, after a day or 
two of mourning over their loss, bringing sticks 
and straws to the same place to make another 
nest. She wished she could explain to them, 
but that was impossible. Forced for their 
sake to interfere with their work again, she 
found the duty harder the second time, and 
there were tears in her eyes as she pulled their 
little plans to pieces. 

She had no doubt that this last repulse 
would drive them away, and she would never 
see them again. But the tiny creatures 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 243 

recovered from their discouragement (possibly 
they began to understand), and to the delight 
of the good lady, they chose another place, 
brought their materials, and constructed their 
cosy house in a snug safe nook, away from 
cats, dogs, and household disturbance, in the 
grapevine over the door; and all summer she 
was comforted by their happy twitterings, 
and knew they were her friends. 

She told this story long afterwards to one 
who wondered at the beautiful patience with 
which she bore the loss of her husband and 
child, and how instead of spending her time 
alone, in idle and passionate complaint, she 
could cheerfully mingle with the living who 
needed her, till her life became a public bless- 
ing. She had had her cherished plans, and 
God had disappointed them, but when tempted 
to repine and lament, she always remembered 
the birds. They had obeyed the direction of 
a wiser friend. They helped her to reflect 
that Divine Wisdom, which does not willingly 
afflict, was higher than hers when it pointed 
her love from earth to a better place. 

VII. HOPEFUL AND HELPFUL PIETY 

The following is condensed from a transla- 
tion of Rev. H. F. R. Lammennais' discourse 
printed in a French paper. 

Two good men were neighbors, but they 



244 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

were not alike. Both were poor, but one 
never worried. The other was continually 
asking himself, "If I fall sick or die what will 
become of my wife and children!" 

One day the gloomy neighbor while at work 
noticed a little bird carrying food into a thicket 
for her fledglings, and he found diversion for 
a short time in watching her. Suddenly a 
swooping hawk caught her and carried her 
away screaming. "Alas," sighed the sad 
spectator, "the death of the feeder means the 
death of the fed. Like that family in the 
bush so will mine be when I am gone," and he 
felt more downhearted than ever. 

That night, distressed with mingled sym- 
pathy and foreboding, he could not sleep. 
Fellow-feeling drew him the next day to seek 
the motherless nest, and see if the fledglings 
were alive, or how they fared. He had not 
noted before that another bird had her nest 
in the same thicket, but what was his astonish- 
ment to find this other bird feeding the bereaved 
young ones! She came again and again, and 
dropped worms and insects into the gaping 
mouths of the little orphans, till her silent 
observer stole away wondering at the sisterly 
piety of the second mother. He told his 
cheerful neighbor what he had seen. 

"Ah, there is your lesson," said the man 
who trusted God. "That neighbor bird is a 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 245 

type of the Friend who never forgets. Why- 
are you disquieted? If you die I will be the 
father of your children; if I die you will be 
father to mine; if we both die before they can 
help themselves, they have a Father in heaven 
who lives forever." 

In an old book of religious anecdotes a 
"Mr. Dod" is mentioned who learned his 
bird-lesson in a shorter way. He was a very 
godly man, and a preacher, but troubled how 
to support a large family on a small salary. 
One day, as he sat contemplating a hen scratch- 
ing after food for her chickens, he reflected, 
"This hen did but live before she had a brood. 
Now both she and her six chickens live. My 
Heavenly Father feeds them. He will feed 
me. 'As my day so shall my strength be.'" 

VIII. FLAVEL AND THE 
NIGHTINGALES 

At about the time of the birth of John 
Flavel, perhaps the most saintly minister of 
the church of the Dissenters in England two 
centuries ago, a pair of nightingales built 
their nest close to the chamber of his mother, 
and the delightful warblings of these sweet 
birds was the music that welcomed him into 
the world. The coincidence was remarked 
by the pious neighbors as a special omen of 



246 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

heavenly favor, and the fond expectation 
was justified in FlavePs life. Eloquent, gentle, 
and persuasive, both as a preacher and writer, 
his spoken words clung and lingered in the 
memory of his hearers during their lifetimes * 
with a vitality that print can never represent; 
but it was his personal character as an ex- 
emplary man of God that gave him the emi- 
nence always linked with his name. Few 
have ever reached his height of seraphic piety, 
and fewer since St. Paul have had, like him, 
"a day of Heaven." 

Were the nightingales of his birth-place 
translating the harp-songs of heaven to John 
Flavel all the while that he lay in his cradle? 
Some early ministry from the sinless world 
no less remarkable may well have set the key- 
note to the beautiful harmony of such a life. 

1 One of his young hearers, who later in life removed 
to America, remained indifferent to religious things until 
he had reached the age of one hundred years, when, in 
a serious hour of retrospection, a sermon of FlavePs re- 
curred to his mind with astonishing vividness and force. 
Every point of it rose clearly to his recollection, and its 
appeal found the way to his heart at last. He died in 
Middleboro, Mass., and his name was Luke Short. But 
his lifetime ran well beyond its hundreth anniversary, and 
he is remembered to this day as the man who was con- 
verted and joined the church when a century old. Lon- 
gevity attenuates sleep. From the densest spiritual sleep 
of a lifetime one in extreme age may "rise up at the voice 
of a bird," 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 247 

IX. AN ANNUAL MEMORIAL SERMON 

It is preached by the birds every summer 
over the tomb of Audubon. They are minster- 
birds, for during their annual sojourn North 
thousands of them house themselves and their 
families in the flues of the great chimney of 
the church on 153d Street at Washington 
Heights, New York City. 

In the air above Trinity Cemetery, where 
the body of the great naturalist lies, the daily 
memorial celebration (or service) begins at 
six o'clock or not far from sunset. For an 
hour or more these lightning-winged swifts 
or chimney-swallows seem to fill the evening 
sky with their half-plaintive little cries and 
their whirling circles of flight like rings within 
rings of a horizontal wheel. "They have done 
this for many years," said a venerable resident 
to an interested visitor. "Only a block away 
stands the house where Audubon died, and 
that monument yonder with the tall white 
marble cross covers the place where he sleeps. 
On one side of the monument it says, 'O all 
ye fowls of the air, bless ye the Lord, and 
praise Him and magnify Him forever'; and 
I like to think the swallows circle round the 
cemetery because they know the great man 
who was their friend sleeps there." 

Early every morning the birds scatter to 



248 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

West Chester, New Jersey, Long Island, and 
every point that tempts their tireless wings, 
snatching their floating food, and reveling 
in the sheer delight of freedom and restless 
exercise, and it is not till toward nightfall that 
the entire multitude are assembled again to 
repeat their inevitable rite. It is their social 
zeitfest, but the form of it, the place of it, 
and the record and associations of the dead 
man's life compel the same feeling that in- 
spired the venerable neighbor's words. 

There is a singular solemnity of loving 
memory in this flying feast of the swallows 
over the tomb of Audubon — like a triumph at 
the shrine of a buried conqueror — an athanasia 
flashed to his spirit from the feathered friends 
he loved — a winged sermon to the world on 
his gifts and goodness — a motion-picture of 
his epitaph. 

X. A SLUGGARD'S LESSON 

"Behold a bird's nest; mark it well. 

No tool had he that wrought, 

No hand to drive a nail or fit a joint. 

His little bill was all. 

And yet how neatly finished — what nice hand 

With every implement and means of art 

Could compass such another?" 

A man whose laziness made him none the 
better for his rating in the census as a "com- 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 249 

mon laborer," and none the better for his 
Indian blood, was idling his time away under 
a tree with his pipe in his mouth, when he saw 
a bird carrying sticks and grass into the tree, 
and could just descry the spot in the branches 
which appeared to be the goal of her little 
trips. She was fabricating a nest, and the 
indolent fellow had curiosity enough to interest 
himself in her operations. His pipe went out, 
but he sat and watched till admiration put a 
new thought into his head. He looked at his 
two big hands; compared them with the busy 
beak of the pretty architect; got up ashamed, 
and went to work. From that time he was 
never out of a job. 

XL CHRISTIANIZING A MINING 
CAMP 

In an Australian gold-field known as "The 
Ovens," one miner more prosperous than the 
rest sent money to England with a message 
to his parents to come to him, and to bring, 
if possible, an English skylark with them. 
A ship in due time brought the mother (the 
father died on the passage), and, sure enough, 
she had the skylark — a tame one in a cage, 
but a real songster. 

Happy were they who first saw and heard 
the bird! It began to sing as soon as its cage 
was hung in the morning sun outside the 



250 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

" store" at the settlement. Its voice reached 
the miners nearest at work, and brought them 
" all standing," tool in hand. Every exile 
heard "Home, sweet Home" in the music, 
and felt a swelling in his throat. Men who 
had been swearing at their work stopped, and 
thought of their childhood prayer. The news 
soon spread among the gold-diggers far and 
near that there was "a real skylark at 
Wilsted's." On Sunday hordes swarmed to 
headquarters from every placer and gulch; 
rough British yeomen who had done their 
best to find something to wear nicer than a 
shirt and trunks, and to appear with clean 
faces and combed hair. Some of them came 
twenty miles. The tuneful bird did not dis- 
appoint them. And how the men listened to 
its sermon-hymn! The voice from their native 
land thrilled them at once with the hunger of 
homesickness and the grateful welcome of a 
long-lost delight. For an hour the happy lark 
preached to his charmed congregation, and 
when he ceased there was a long sigh of satis- 
faction, as if the audience had scarcely breathed 
through the whole service. There was mois- 
ture, too, in eyes that for many seasons had 
forgotten tears. 

As the multitude melted away an inquiry 
was overheard that expressed one phase of 
the common feeling. 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 251 

"Joe, do ye think Wilsted would sell that 
bird? I'd give its weight in gold for it, and 
think it cheap." 

"Sell that skylark? Not he," was the 
indignant answer. "How would you like a 
fellow to come to our village at home, and 
make a bid for our parson?" 

XII. A SACRED BUILDING LOT 

A tradition lovingly cherished by the Irish 
Catholics credits the locating of the Abbey of 
Moyne to the movements of a skylark whose 
song in the air arrested the attention of a 
pious monk. He had been commissioned to 
find a site for a monastery somewhere in the 
green fields of Mayo (a county on the west 
coast of Ireland), and after a long and unsatis- 
factory inspection of the grounds lying by the 
river Moy, he sought lodgings for the night, 
praying for divine help in his choice and 
decision. 

In the morning he was early awake, and went 
forth refreshed to renew his examination. A 
skylark's song attracted him, and he raised 
his eyes to heaven to watch the return of the 
invisible singer. At length the lark ceased 
his matin psalm, and dropped gently to the 
earth in a level space of luxuriant grass. Then 
as if to bathe himself in its coolness, he ran in 
a wide circle, tracing an outline of his course 



252 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

through the dew. The monk, intent on his 
mission, and noting the breadth and beauty 
of the ground and its situation, followed the 
track of the bird, and measured with his eye 
the compass circumscribed by its little feet 
and wings. Then he paused where he stood, 
and breathed a devout thanksgiving. "God 
sent the lark as His messenger, direct from 
heaven," he said. "The monastery shall be 
built where His singing servant marked the 
map of its wall." And so it was. 

Only a shattered cloister or two of the Abbey 
of Moyne now remain; but the skylarks still 
sing above it "at hearen's gate." 

XIII. GOD'S PENSIONER 

I have one preacher that I love better than 
any other upon earth," said Martin Luther. 
"It is my tame robin which preaches to me 
every day. I put crumbs upon my window- 
sill, especially at night. He hops on the sill, 
and eats as much as he desires to satisfy his 
need. From thence he always flies to a little 
tree close by and lifts up his voice to God, 
and sings his carol of praise and gratitude, 
tucks his head under his wing, and goes fast 
asleep, leaving tomorrow to look out for itself. 
He is the best preacher that I have on earth." 

It is the "wild" robin, however — or those 
of his race left with us in the winter — that 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 253 

is the real pensioner of God, and better illus- 
trates the trust that "leaves tomorrow to look 
out for itself." How does the cold weather 
robin know that he will not starve to death 
when snow comes? Some ancestor caught 
alone at the North, by accident or necessity, 
may have left a tradition of his safety — 
perhaps of the fortuitous or voluntary crumbs 
likely to be found everywhere near human 
haunts and habitations; but inevitably, the 
migratory bird, robin or otherwise, takes 
a risk when he remains. Fortunately the 
lonesome-looking little fellow is always wel- 
come; and incidents like the following show 
that he can sometimes put on the attractive- 
ness of his summer company. 

The sexton of a village church had warmed 
the meeting-house for its usual Yule-tide 
decorating work, and had returned after the 
work was done to see that the fires were safe. 
Neither he nor any one knew that a solitary 
robin (probably during this early evening visit) 
had slipped in, and had perched somewhere 
up among the evergreens, and settled himself, 
no doubt, with his head under his wing. 

Christmas-day was Sunday-school day, and 
a carol by a choir of the children was the 
first part of the worship. Amid the swell of 
the juvenile voices during their simple anthem, 
certain ears in the congregation detected a 



254 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

foreign strain or unstudied obligato somewhere 
in the auditorium, but nothing was plain till 
the carol ended, and instantly the hushed 
assembly heard the song of a robin among the 
green boughs that hung along the front of the 
gallery. That a winter robin ever sings was 
as unrecorded rarity, and the spirit of the 
movement made the sound seem like a heavenly 
accompaniment to the Advent music. It was 
the carol of the children and the summerlike 
verdure that hung about the walls that beguiled 
the sweet bird back to his nesting-tree and his 
June-time melody, but the tender surprise of 
his little roulade was a delight not unmingled 
with reverence. Every ear and heart listened 
till the bird ceased to sing, and then the minis- 
ter read (how could he help it?) "Yea the 
sparrow hath found a house . . . even Thine 
altars" . . . and prefaced his Christmas dis- 
course with some newly inspired remarks on 
the story of Jesus. 

"The Babe of Bethlehem was born where 
no house could be found for his cradle. The 
Boy of Nazareth called the Temple his Father's 
house, and never felt more at home than when 
he was there. The Man of Galilee was an 
unsettled preacher, and brother to the poor; 
and when he said the birds of the air have 
nests, he compared their lot with his own 
homelessness. From the heavenly mansion, 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 255 

where he now reigns, the Prince of Peace 
thinks what welcome he must send, on this 
anniversary of His birth, to greet a wandering 
robin sheltered in His Father's house on earth — 
the singing bird to the altars where His Honor 
dwells. The dear little feathered songster 
is one of God's pensioners." 

XIV. PASSING, BUT HOME-BOUND 

One does not easily forget the oft-told story 
of the old counselor's tender paraphrase of 
life and death. In the rude hall of an ancient 
Norse king he sat by night with other courtiers 
and guards younger than himself, before a 
blazing fire of logs. They were talking of 
serious matters, for the news of the coming 
of a Christian missionary with his new faith 
had stirred the shaggy worshipers of Odin 
to strong debate. In the midst of it sud- 
denly from the outside gloom a bird flew 
through an embrasure, and darting over the 
heads of the company to the end of the long 
apartment, disappeared, through another open- 
ing, into the night. 

One speaker, breaking the momentary silence, 
muttered hopelessly, "Such is the life of man — 
out of the dark into the light, and then lost 
in the dark again." 

"Yes," replied the old counselor, "but the 
bird has his nest beyond." 



256 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

XV. WHERE ARE YOU GOING? 

The coincidence of a fact and a guilty 
fancy related here, with its serious sequel, is 
cited in one of Spurgeon's sermons as similar 
to a case in his own experience. 

A German pastor rehearsed to his evening 
Bible class a singular instance of conversion 
from Schubert's "Old and New," a book of 
religious anecdotes. To enliven his discourses 
he was in the habit of spicing them with short 
illustrative stories, and this trait of his lectures 
was doubtless the attraction that drew certain 
hearers who came from no better motive. 

The story that evening concerned a man 
who had planned a wicked deed, and was on 
his way to a neighboring village to commit his 
crime, when just at nightfall, while following a 
sheltered path across a pasture-field, he heard 
the pipe of a quail. That was nothing strange, 
but cowardly imagination, keyed up to a 
pitch of super-consciousness that night, gave 
it a sinister accent. To his ear, now too sin- 
fully acute, it sounded exactly like, "Where, 
where — you going?" Again and again came 
the accusing question, "Where, where — you 
going?" How terribly articulate and personal 
it was! And the bird kept it up until the 
baffled culprit, unable to face the answer of 
his conscience, was scared out of his foul 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 257 

design. His fright forced him to reflection 
and remorse that ended in lasting repentance. 

" I went home when I had concluded my class 
lecture," said the pastor, " but I heard some one 
following me up the steps, and turned to face 
a man well known as a common scoffer, and 
to wonder at his angry look and question. 

4 Who told you that story about me, Herr 
parson?' 

" 'What story?' 
' That one about the quail. You let it all 
out there, before a whole roomful. I demand 
to know who told you?' 

'Man alive!' I replied, 'You were never 
more mistaken in your life. Come into my 
study, and I'll show you where I got the story.' 
I got the book and showed him the place. 
The man's rage half blinded him at first, and 
as he read he did not know what to make of it. 
Then he broke down, and in a choked voice 
said, 'That is exactly what happened to 
me. 

To him there was something supernatural 
in such duplicated testimony. He heard in 
it the voice of God who knows every secret 
thing. The effect of the whole strange occur- 
rence was to change the man entirely. The 
scorner became a humble disciple, and gave 
evidence of a new heart in his after life. 



258 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

XVI. GOD TOUCHED HIS HAND 

Father Taylor, the famous sailor preacher, 
used to say, "The doves that live in my belfry 
are my only church-members that never make 
mistakes." 

They had as good an opinion of him, and 
they often showed their love for him by alight- 
ing on his head like a benediction, and cluster- 
ing and cooing around him when he sat alone. 

One of them, in a little visit to a sick sailor, 
as if in sympathy, stirred memories that 
rebuked a reckless life, and made the man a 
willing pupil at the feet of his religious teacher. 
As he lay in a reclining chair on the piazza of 
the boarding-house, near the Bethel church, 
the dove flew down to him, and lit upon his 
hand. Its gentle pressure recalled his child- 
hood. "It's just the way mother's pet doves 
used to do," he said to himself. He had lived 
without any religious or moral mainstay, 
and penitence came to him in his better mood. 
Father Taylor welcomed him soon among his 
seafaring flock with the assurance that he 
had found the safe shelter of the Cross. His 
mother's God had touched his hand. 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 259 

XVII. LISTEN BEFORE YOU LEAP 

Tradition current in the neighborhood of 
Buckfield, Me., gives this account of the tune 
"Hallowell," one of the melodies in minor, 
much fancied in early New England worship. 
Its composer, Hiram Maxim, when a young 
man, had been disappointed in love, and in a 
fit of desperation he armed himself with a stout 
rope, one day, and went into the woods, deter- 
mined to hang himself. Reaching a spot, 
sufficiently lonesome for the deed (said to be 
somewhere between Owl's Head and "Streaked 
Mountain"), he stopped to listen. Nothing 
broke the silence but the voice of a single bird, 
and the tone of it seemed as plaintive as he 
felt. He looked about him, and in a half- 
grown-up old clearing he saw a forsaken wood- 
chopper's shanty, and the mournful bird 
sitting on the roof. Perhaps the little creature 
had suffered a bereavement — or a disappoint- 
ment like his own. At any rate its note 
chimed with his mood so completely that it 
made company of solitude itself. Maxim 
was a musical genius, and involuntarily he 
dropped his rope and sat down, and with a 
sharp splinter pricked off the syllables of a 
solemn air, on a strip of white birch bark, to 
Nahum Tate's version of the 7th stanza of 
the I02d Psalm: 



260 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

"As on some lonely building's top 
The sparrow 1 makes her moan, 
Far from the tents of joy and hope 
I sit and grieve alone." 

The composition absorbed him, and the 
pensive tune turned out so much to his liking 
that he went on and fitted the other three 
parts, continuing his work till the shadows of 
evening fell. The tune as harmonized was a 
musical triumph, as he believed, and he sud- 
denly felt a longing to hear it sung — and 
enjoy the reputation he was certain it would 
win for him. 

Needless to say, the young man's love of 
life had come back. Morbid sentiment gave 
place to ambition. He kicked the rope into 
the bushes, and went home. 

The tune of "Hallowell" found its place 
in the first New England church book of 
psalmody, and, copied from that into other 
collections, was sung for a hundred years, 
until the ancient taste for minor music went 
out of fashion. 

1 "Sparrow." The bird alluded to by the Psalmist is 
supposed to be the turdus solitarius, common in western 
Asia, as well as in southern Europe. 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 26 1 

XVIII. "WHAT FOR?" 

Unrepented and unpunished wrong-doing 
may find rebuke at least in the sermon of a 
bird, even if no reformation follows. One of 
the illustrations of it is the story of a parrot 
that belonged to a rope-maker in Normandy. 

Across the street lived a woman who used 
to whip her child unmercifully when in a rage 
at something the little boy had done. When 
the mother would rush at him with a stick he 
would cry "What for? What for?" and this 
happened so often that the parrot caught it 
up and incorporated it in his repertoire of smart 
sayings. People who, strange to say, had 
appeared indifferent to the human plaint, 
and its betrayal of arbitrary cruelty some- 
where, began to notice the parrot's mim- 
icry, and no doubt the pitiful pathos of the 
tone lost nothing in the bird's screaming 
duplicate. 

"What for?" what for?" echoing from the 
rope-maker's shop had an accent of distress 
that stopped passengers in the street, and 
some looked indignantly into the window. 
Naturally after a while it became a nuisance 
to the parrot's master to be obliged to point 
to his bird, and explain, and attention was 
turned to the cruelty of the bad-tempered 
mother. The disgusted rope-maker sold his 



262 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

innocent bird to a non-resident party for what 
he could get, and he and his offended neighbors 
voted the abusive woman a public reproach, 
and under the threat to take her child away 
compelled her to quit the village. 

XIX. THE SONG IN THE NIGHT 

The Rev. C. A. Brewster, while sojourning 
in Switzerland, noted in one of his letters to 
the Christian Work and Evangelist a beautiful 
lesson taught by the nightingales of Ballagio. 
One stormy episode marred the poetry of 
bright weather around that lovely cape which 
stretched into and overhangs Lake Como, but 
in the blackness of night, through the pouring 
rain and shattering thunder, the visitor heard 
under the window of his room the singing of a 
nightingale. It was the tempest that awoke 
him, but it was the sweet singer that kept him 
awake, and he lay drinking in the melody, and 
sharing the joy and security which no tumult 
could terrify. 

The listener could never forget the sooth- 
ing effect of the music during those hours of 
uproar and gloom, and of the inspiring thought 
that even in the wrack of the elements the 
nightingales are abroad. By the memory of 
that song in the night the brave bird taught 
the minister to preach faith, hope, and cour- 
age with a better understanding. 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 263 

XX. A HARD HEART SOFTENED 

This story of a surly convict in a British 
prison is repeated in substance from the Boston 
Transcript of July 12, 1901, under title of "A 
Friend in Feathers." 

Hawley Smart tells a story of Tom Stone, 
who, for complicity in a game-keeper's murder, 
was sentenced to Portland prison to work in 
the quarries. For twenty years he was sullen 
and refractory, and made enemies of his 
jailers. By and by a surprising change was 
noticed in his temper and behavior — and it 
was all owing to the fact that he had picked 
up a pet. It was a young sparrow that evi- 
dently had been hatched late in the season, 
and being lost or deserted by its parents, 
wandered into the shelter of the prison. 
Companionship with the little creature, which 
under his care had become very tame, made 
him gentle and tractable, and so completely 
was his sullen and insubordinate spirit subdued, 
that his warden learned to count on him as a 
friend. When, on one occasion, two desperate 
mutineers in the prison murderously assaulted 
this officer, it was Tom Stone's prompt inter- 
ference that saved his life. From that time 
he was a trusted man. The wife of the gov- 
ernor interested herself in him and gave him a 
pretty cage for his bird, and procured for him 



264 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

such employment in the prison as brought him 
opportunities of improvement and encourage- 
ment. The sparrow lived out its brief bird- 
life long before Tom's release, but the mission 
of his little favorite remained a blessing to 
him, and its memory a tender monitor. His 
good conduct shortened his term by several 
years. 

We read of "sermons in stones," but here 
was a sermon to one; a sermon without words. 

XXI. NO TASTE FOR HEAVEN 

Human habit and appetite have a moral 
meaning and carry more or less responsibility. 
The winged races differ as men do, but the 
truth that "God made them so" (as Dr. 
Watts has it of the "bears and lions") settles 
the question of character. The finer or the 
grosser kinds get the name "good" or "bad" 
in our vocabulary, but it is only by a convenient 
license, 

" To paint a moral or adorn a tale." 

When fiction and fable enter bird-life they 
invade a department of creation where acts 
and ethics have no connection, but man-life 
is so close to it that similar traits in both make 
apt sermons. There is something almost as 
effective as Bunyan's scene of the Crown and 
the Muck-rake in this apologue of the swan 
and the crane. 



OUR WINGED PREACHERS 265 

A beautiful white swan alighted by a stream 
in which a crane was wading about, seeking 
snails. The crane stared in stupid wonder, 
and then inquired, "Where did you come 
from?" 

"From heaven," replied the swan. 

"Heaven? — where is heaven?" 

"Is it possible that you never heard of 
heaven? the place where no creature is ever 
hungry or unhappy — the land of the Eternal 
City, with its river of life, and the trees — " 

"Are there any snails there?" interrupted 
the crane. 

The astonished swan could give him no 
assurance that there were any. 

"Well," said the crane, "you may have 
your heaven — what I want is snails." 

XXII. THE WARNING WEATHER- 
COCK 

One of the earliest, if not the earliest, of 
bird preachers was the domestic cock; and a 
presumption that its remarkable voice con- 
veyed supernatural messages was common to 
ancient nations, the polytheists counting it as 
the protege and oracle of some one god or 
another, according to their preference of faith. 
The supposed divine signal in the bird's song 
was variously credited to Mars, Apollo, 
Esculapius, etc., so that by local or tribal 



266 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

homage the cock came to be sacred to each of 
them. Wise and good king Numa Pompilius, 
according to the stories of ancient Rome, 
found a religious inspirer and mentor in the 
chanticleer of his day, and at a long later time 
Arab superstition gave the bird a soul and 
placed it among the inhabitants of heaven. 
The Moslem doctors teach that God lends a 
willing ear to him who prays for pardon, to 
him who reads the Koran, and to the crow- 
ing of the cock, which is characterized as 
"divine melody." 

But the most notable religious association 
which gave this lordly fowl its fame as a 
supernal preacher came about by its part in 
the history of the Crucifixion, when on that 
fatal morning the sound of its voice made 
Peter weep. From that day the bird became 
a Christian bird, and churches in gospel lands 
shaped their weather-vanes in the form of a 
cock, as a perpetual admonition to men never 
again to deny their Master. 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 

"Far better in its place the lowliest bird 
Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song 
Than that a seraph's strain should take the word, 
And sing His glory wrong." 

Jean Ingelow 
"Old as the heart are they, 
Birds of the every day, 
Older than sorrow." 

Madison Cawein 

"Warm woods and fresh green fields, 
And thickets-full of songsters." 

Wordsworth 
— "The wise bluebird 
Puts in his little heavenly word." 

Sidney Lanier 

THE first man in the first May, contem- 
plating "the vast of sky athrill with 
lyric sound," and discovering that God's 
little optimists, the birds of the air, were the 
makers of the concert, had a better knowledge, 
probably, of the origin of music than we have. 
But in any discussion of this elusive and tempt- 
ing theme, myth has taken the place of history 
and poetry of prose. Appropriately the spirit 
of the question becomes the spirit of the quest. 
Our search for the time, place, and circum- 
stances of the birth of song walks in the 
twilight of imagination, where the instincts of 



268 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

the oldest nations heard the voice of the morn- 
ing stars. The very fact of melody points 
upward for its pedigree and insists that, like 
truth and beauty, it came from the sky. 

The old Runic "Book of Baraddas" ex- 
plains that one mysterious word in the "An- 
cient Secret" was the sacred word "Rhian," 
and follows with this legend: 

"The birds of Rhianon sang till the angels 
of heaven came to listen to them; and it was 
from their songs that were first obtained both 
vocal and instrumental music. Chants sung 
to the harp by human lips being thus magically 
taught, it was the duty of the bards to listen 
to singing birds, and so, by perpetual lessons 
of nature, bring Celtic minstrelsy to the highest 
possible expression." 

In the literature of the Celestial Empire 
we have the Chinese conception of the gamut 
of seven tones. Like the foregoing legend, 
the story credits the feathered songsters as 
poetic mediums at the mysterious nativity. 
The ruling despot Hoang-Ti, who had a passion 
for organization and scientific form, ordered 
his court minstrel, Ling-lun, the greatest 
musician of his age, to co-ordinate and sys- 
tematize the art of melody, making rules and 
regulations for it, as he (the emperor) had 
already done for the laws and politics of the 
realm. The great musician was to. have six 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 269 

months to complete his task; and failure 
would cost him his life. 

Ling-lun's genius was put on its mettle; but 
study did not bring any answer to his fateful 
problem for many weeks, and he began to 
despair of ever inventing and perfecting a plan 
that would create music into a science and 
save his life. Driven by fear — and shame 
at his own unexpected inadequacy — he fled 
to the country, and wandered up and down 
the banks of the Hoang-ho. His trained ear 
listened and caught the keynote of its flow — 
it was his first hint. He cut a slender bamboo 
and whittled and carved a whistle, and tried 
its tone. After many alterations and trials 
the rude flute blew the autophone of the river. 
He had found nature's fundamental note. 
While he meditated what the next step should 
be, two birds in a tree overhead began to trill 
in the same key, and one, with rising pitch, 
added four notes to its song. The other 
immediately led up the scale with three more, 
and the highest was the tone mate of the first! 
The octave was complete. 

From the prime-tone where it began 
Up the ladder of song it ran, 



And the frame of music was set 
Like a silver-syllabled word, 
Where Melody's alphabet 
Found tongue in the voice of a bird. 



270 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Charmed with the surprising phenomenon of 
sound, Ling-lun cut seven bamboos and 
fashioned them till they blew the seven tones 
of the birds, and went home with the diatonic 
scale in his pocket. 

SINGING SOULS 

The Russian peasants entertain a touching 
fancy that in some way seems associated with 
their half-oriental habit of faith. The first 
singing birds of spring, they love to say, are 
the souls of deceased children returned to 
earth to remind the living that human joy can 
be sinless, and that innocence alone makes 
music safe and sweet. 

A LAND OF NO DEATH IS A LAND 
OF SONG 

B. P. Shillaber, in the story of his travel 
on the Pacific slope sent years ago to Our 
Dumb Animals, makes mention in his charming 
way of his visit to a California "bird-paradise." 
The winged songsters there had all the rights 
and privileges of bird-life that God meant 
them to have. Their warrant of safety was 
over the gate of one resort, "no shooting 
allowed here." It was a large enclosed 
tract of rural ground between Vallejo and 
Benicia, Sonoma County, where throngs of 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 271 

visitors came from near and far for the benefit 
of the sulphur springs. 

"From the moment of our entrance to that 
domain," he says, "the birds seemed to swarm 
everywhere. Their singing was continuous, 
and one California linnet — a handsome little 
fellow — took it upon himself to welcome us. 
He would perch upon the fence a few rods ahead 
of us and pour forth a song of the sweetest 
and loudest notes until we were quite near 
him, and then he would start ahead again, 
still singing, and await our approach. He con- 
tinued this the whole way from the entrance 
gate to the springs, and seemed to be in an 
ecstasy of enjoyment. 

"These little creatures knew nothing of the 
inscription over the gate, but they instinctively 
felt their security from danger because they 
had never been exposed to it. That little 
linnet knew it and was singing it to us all the 
while." 

More striking still is his description of the 
waking dream of beauty and music enjoyed 
while visiting the Calaveras grove of big trees. 

"I was unable, from lameness, to accompany 
my friends into the heart of the grove, but I 
remained alone to wonder at and admire 
enough to give me food for thought during a 
lifetime. As I stood I was startled and de- 
lighted by the voices of what seemed myriads 



272 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

of choiring birds in the tree-tops three hundred 
feet above my head. It seemed to give in 
song the kaleidoscopic effect of the carpet 
flowers of the California plains in spring, in- 
congruous, but exquisite in harmonious com- 
bination. I could see none of the singers. 
They were like the hidden choir of a cathedral. 
Their song came down through the branches, 
and all its sweetness seemed meant for me. 
. . . Birds here hardly need their legal pro- 
tection, living so near the sky. It is 'the 
higher law' they depend upon, and they have 
no fears. I shall never forget that morning 
under the big trees and the glorious concert 
that rewarded my exclusive hearing." 

What a picture to prefigure the prophetic 
fancy of a land of no death and of the un- 
broken joy of the singing birds of millennial 
time when they will be forever immune from 
the bullet and the snare! 

NO TREES, NO SONG-BIRDS 

The higher the type of civilization, the 
nearer the forester and the ornithologist stand 
together. Neither can afford to forget the other. 

In the year 1740 (says a writer in the 
American Monthly) the Prussian authorities, 
being in want of money, ordered the trees 
around Cologne to be cut down and sold for 
timber. The entire city rose up against the 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 273 

movement. The suburban woods were not 
only a local pride for their beauty, but they 
were full of nightingales, and not a man, 
woman, or child who lived in their neighbor- 
hood but would deplore the loss of their songs. 
The indignant burghers, though none of them 
had more than moderate means, raised the 
money among themselves and bought the 
trees standing, and the woods were preserved 
for the nightingales, and the nightingales for 
the inhabitants of Cologne. 

POET AND BIRD 

Mrs. Browning, by poetic license, writes 
a harsh judgment, but her antithesis enforces 
the supreme liking of the common folk for 
nature's minstrels. 

"Said a people to a poet, 'Go out from among us straight- 
way. 

While we are thinking earthly things thou singest of 
divine. 

There's a little fair brown nightingale who, sitting in 
the gateway, 

Makes fitter music for our ear than any song of thine.' " 

A SACRAMENTAL ROBIN 

One chilly Sunday, says an English paper, 
a robin took refuge at Pott-Shrigley, near 
Macclesfield. It was the regular day for 
the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and the 



274 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

sacred elements stood exposed, pending the 
opening ceremony. The robin hopped upon 
the communion table and pecked at the bread, 
but the curate covered it. He then repaired 
to the vestry, cut off a slice from a loaf there, 
and left Robin to enjoy his feast. 

When he returned to the church early in 
the afternoon with the juvenile classes the 
bird was heard singing, and for sometime con- 
tinued his little hymn, greatly to the delight 
and abstraction of the small people. At the 
end of the afternoon service the robin was 
fed again, and being let out by the chancel 
door, the tuneful creature perched among the 
branches of the great trees near by and poured 
forth as sweet a thanksgiving as was ever 
sung by a bird. 

The little feathered saint had observed the 
Eucharist in his own unconventional way that 
Lord's Day, but what communicant had 
honored the ordinance or kept holy time more 
innocently ? 



THE WOOD THRUSH 

"From bough to bough he gaily goes, 
Leaving a trail behind 
Of golden notes whose music flows 
Like fragrance down the wind." 

Charlotte Becker 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 275 

Mortimer Collins calls this bird 1 "God's 
Poet." 

"All thro' the sultry hours of June 
From morning blithe to golden noon, 
And till the star of evening climbs 
The gray-blue East a world too soon, 
There sings a thrush amid the limes. 

God's poet hid in foliage green 
Sings endless songs, himself unseen; 
Right seldom come his silent times. 
Linger ye summer hours serene! 
Sing on, dear thrush, amid the limes. 

Thou mellow angel of the air, 
May I not dream God sent thee there 
To chide me for my earthlier rhymes 
With music's soul, all praise and prayer — 

Closer to God art thou than I, 
His minstrel thou, whose brown wings fly 
Thro' silent ether's summer climes. 
Ah never may thy music die!" 

THE BOBOLINK 

"He comes too late and goes too soon" is 
the universal verdict. If he would only get 
here the first of May and stay through August! 
Besides, the melancholy impression grows that 

1 The song of the wood thrush and of the hermit thrush 
are so nearly identical that to the popular ear they are 
undistinguishable, and the two birds are supposed to be 
of one species. 



276 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

there are not so many of him as there used to 
be. If something is thinning out the species 
it can hardly be laid to the English sparrows, 
for their habitat and his feeding and nesting 
grounds are far apart. And we shudder to 
charge it to the festive little fellow himself, 
when he sheds his song-time regalia and goes 
south to plunder rice-fields, and be killed by 
the planters' rifles for potpie. When he has 
gone who will write the elegy on that inimitable 
bird? 

At one time or another "Robert O'Lincoln" 
has doubtless owed his life to his merry tangle 
of melody as he has perched a quarter of a 
minute on twig or fence dangerously near 
some passing schoolboy, or fluttered sidelong 
into the grass, tinkling his funny ridicule at 
an awkwardly aimed pebble. One small 
pirate of the bird-killing tribe, who had picked 
up a stone when a bobolink lit within shooting 
distance, drew back his arm just as the little 
piebald singer let a gush of jingling melody 
out of his open bill; but somehow the hand 
with the stone in it "hung fire." Bobolink 
continued his roulade, and the stone dropped, 
and the arm with it. A farmer in the field 
near by happened to be watching the boy. 

"Why didn't you throw it?" he called out. 

"He sung so, I couldn't," muttered the 
boy. 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 277 

A TABERNACLE BIRD 

(At Martha's Vineyard) 

" Borne thither on the pilgrim tide, 
When late those forest aisles I trod, 
I saw a Temple, cool and wide, 
And bannered with the name of God. 

And lo! beneath its sacred dome 
Where echoing anthems rolled above, 
A bird had built her tiny home 
To nurse and rear her brood of love. 

Fit roof of rest her peaceful perch 
Where Sabbath shelter shut her in, 
Thrice welcome to our sylvan church, 
Thou winged soul unsoiled by sin. 



Still in these shades of summer sweet 
Bright singer, build and brood unstirred, 
And long this greenwood Zion greet 
The music of her Temple-bird!" 

T. B. in The Watchman 



A SINGER'S GIFT 

Stories like the following are so frequent in 
old cabinets of anecdotes, illustrating the care 
of divine Providence, that they seem common- 
place — or even suggest made-up embellish- 
ment; but an incident related in the Orphan's 
Friend by Rev. Dwight Williams may be 
worth a place. 



278 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

An escaped canary-bird flew into a house 
where a poor man lived who had been thrown 
out of employment, and had long been unable 
to procure sufficient work to earn his own 
living and the support of his household. He 
was at home with his family, and every heart 
in the group was heavy with the prospect of 
soon losing the only shelter they had. The 
bird at first flitted nervously about the room, 
but finally perched upon the cupboard, and 
uttered a few sweet notes that seemed to ask, 
"Where am I?" A snatch of song that had 
the same tiny appeal in it convinced the 
family that the little stranger was a stray pet 
lost by some owner in the neighborhood. An 
empty cage was procured at a house not far 
away, and no sooner was the bird inside the 
cage than it began to sing, and the melody was 
so rich and loud that it was heard in the street. 

In the midst of it the husband of the lady 
who owned the bird knocked at the door and 
was admitted. "I think we have found him," 
he said, smiling. 

He was a man of wealth and a benevolent 
heart, and happened to know something of the 
circumstances of the family. He presented 
them with a reward so large that it evoked a 
protest. "Keep the money," said the gentle- 
man. "The bird is priceless, and very likely 
we should have lost it but for you." 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 279 

The sum not only paid the poor laborer's 
arrears of rent, but tided him over the idle 
days till work and wages came to him again. 



SERENADES OF SOLITUDE 

— "Mute is the day's sunny glory, 

While Thine hath a Voice . . . 

More sweet than the Siren's sweet story." 

Moore. 

"All night I heard a singing bird 
Upon the topmost tree. 



"O come you from the Isles of Greece 
Or from the banks of Seine, 
Or off some tree in forests free 
That fringe the Western Main?" 

Charles Kingsley. 

The desert lark is an English traveler's 
discovery — if the first mention makes one a 
discoverer after hundreds of others have seen 
and heard it without notice. It is found only 
in deserts, and its voice seems singularly in 
tune with the solitudes of nature, and the 
atmosphere of ancient ruins. It is a little 
brown bird with a speckled breast usually 
seen sitting on the top of a bush. At intervals 
it springs into the air, rising straight like a 
skylark, with a plaintive but sweet and 
touching song, and then with closed wings it 



280 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

dives suddenly back to its perch. The tone- 
quality of its little chant is so like the human 
voice that a hearer might be slow to trace it 
to its real source. 

Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates. 

Nowhere are the serenades of solitude so 
eagerly coveted and welcomed as in the 
awful silence of the frozen wildernesses of 
the great North, but even there, on many a 
gloomy coast or island, the silence is broken 
by the rush of bird-wings if not by bird-voices 
which, however harsh, sound sweetly to a 
wistful stranger in his Arctic exile. In a 
temperature that turns mercury solid, and 
chills everything metallic till the touch of it 
"burns" the flesh, millions of waterfowl dwell, 
giving movement to the desolate landscape or 
darkening the air with their countless pinions, 
though the cold in winter may congeal even 
the breath of a bird. Sir John Franklin, 
wintering at Melville Island, would have been 
thankful to hear the familiar call of the crow, 
but a pair of ravens that stayed there through 
the long icy night found their breath frozen 
as it left their beaks and turned to snow 
around their neck-feathers. Yet on bleak 
Spitzbergen, the hermit-island of the north- 
most hyperborean sea, one landing-place of 
daring navigators bears the name of Vogel 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 28 1 

Sang (bird-song), as if to commemorate a 
sound of winged multitudes which, to them, 
was music. Indeed, for half the year, in and 
around the Polar Sea, the fur-clad adventurer 
hears occasionally the twitter of the snow 
bird and snow bunting, the sharp note or cheer- 
ful chatter of the crossbill, and the clang of 
the wild gander and the swan. At Great Bear 
Lake on the Arctic Circle voyagers tell us, 
too, of the "singing birds and orioles" that 
"serenade their mates at midnight." 

Sargeant's Arctic Adventures by Sea and Land, 

The Watchtower instances a lover of nature 
who used to rise in the night when awakened 
by the music of the mocking-bird, and sit 
at his open window to listen. The singer's 
nest was in the garden below, and always at 
midnight he began his sweet solos, whether 
it was starlight or stormy. 

This untroubled constancy of happy sound 
(already repeatedly quoted of other night- 
warblers) is inexhaustible as a text-lesson, 
and ministers in countless pulpits have cited 
its metaphor of spiritual peace to souls sleepless 
with trouble, or invoked the feeling of the 
Southern listener who would rather hear than 
sleep. To this man, especially in rainy mid- 
nights, the beautiful sounds were gloriously 
uplifting to his spirit, and when the thunder 



282 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

rolled he made the brave confidence that con- 
tinued the song his own sentiment and master 
mood. 

For every heart-sufferer to call to remem- 
brance a "song in the night," however long 
ago, is like appealing to the birthday of his 
faith. Hope and Faith are both birds of 
paradise. They may build their nests in our 
garden, and sing in darkness underourwindows. 

EASTER PRAISE IN A TREE 

The Baltimore Episcopal Methodist records 
that on an Easter Sunday in Mobile, Ala., 
a mocking-bird stationed himself in one of 
the splendid oaks around the church edifice, 
and sang through the whole service. 

The time and place made the incident 
memorable; but in the cathedral of the great 
Creation feathered choristers everywhere are 
lifting up their Te Deum Laudamus, whether 
the calendar indicates Easter, Christmas, or 
Passion-week. 

SHE EXCUSED HER CANARY 

The Cincinnati Commercial, at the time of 
President Garfield's death, recorded one touch- 
ing syllable of the universal threnody heard 
throughout the nation. 

"A beautiful little girl in a beautiful house 
took in all the signs of general grief, and sobbed 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 283 

in sympathy when she saw others weep. Her 
canary's cage had been covered, but she 
thought the bird ought to know why, and she 
removed the cover and told him very seriously: 
' Dickey, Mr. Garfield is dead! Now, birdie, 
you mustn't sing because — you won't, will 
you, birdie?' But the tiny songster in his 
merry heart knew nothing of the nation's 
loss, and its after-tide of public sorrow, but 
poured out his matin song, and whistled and 
carolled as if the moment were the happiest 
of his life. The tearful eyes of the child gazed 
at him in pretty wonder a second or two, and 
she said, 'I guess you fink Mr. Garfield's up 
in heaven.'" 

AN ORCHESTRA OF ESCAPED 
VOCALISTS 

A medley of native music unexampled 
probably in similar circumstances was one of 
the singular episodes of the great Chicago fire. 

A wealthy proprietor owned a large aviary, 
near the upper lake-shore, in which lived a 
multitude of singing birds. The house was 
very long, with glass sides, and passers-by 
often stopped to enjoy the sight of the pretty 
inmates, and the music of their singing as 
they fluttered about, preening their feathers, 
or feeding, or bathing. 

One afternoon in the terrible week of the 



284 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

fire, a cloud of houseless tame birds, mostly 
canaries, were seen moving up the street by 
weary short flights, and their appearance and 
manner showed at once that they were fugitives 
from homes in the burning city. The for- 
lorn and tired creatures caught sight of the 
aviary and its happy birds, and began to fly by 
dozens and scores against the glass, and peck 
and flutter for admittance. 

The attendants in charge at once understood 
the appeal, and hurriedly shutting their own 
birds into a remoter compartment of the 
aviary, they threw open the large windows of 
the emptied space, and retired to see what 
would happen. In a few minutes the whole 
frightened flock of little strangers had slipped 
inside and settled down in panting content, 
grateful for their wonderful refuge. 

It was some time before they were rested 
enough to take note of their surroundings, but 
discovering that food and water were plenty, 
they began presently to eat, drink, and bathe. 
When they were refreshed and had made 
their toilets, the other birds were allowed to 
enter and scrape acquaintance. There was 
every evidence of amity, and even welcome in 
the reception, and such a chorus of song went 
up as was never heard there before when the 
wanderers and their tuneful hosts joined in a 
wild sangerfest of hospitality and thanksgiving. 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 285 



THE MUSIC OF AGES 

"Unworn the ancient carols pour 
From throat of living bird 
The very strains that o'er and o'er, 
In vernal gladness heard, 

The turtles cooed in fir and pine, 
And mid the myrtles sung 
The nightingales of Palestine 
When Solomon was young." 

T. B. in Life Songs. 



JENNY LIND'S RIVAL 

One would think that the first narrator of 
this dainty anecdote might have taken the 
small trouble to name the kind of bird that 
figures in the little play. But, authentic or 
not, the story re-appears in the same fashion, 
every few years, on account of its cuteness. 

Jenny Lind was riding in the country one 
day with a party of friends, when "a bird of 
brilliant plumage" in a tree near the road as 
they drove by trilled out such a complication 
of sweet notes as to astonish her. The car- 
riage stopped, and Jenny, in a sportive freak, 
sang one of her finest roulades. The bonny 
bird arched his neck to one side, and appeared 
to listen, and then repeated his rippling melody 
in a style that made the great cantatrice want 
to clap her hands. But she would not scare 



286 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

the bird away. She countered on her rival 
immediately with a jewel-chain of gay Tyrolean 
yodels that set the echoes flying, but birdie 
took it up, and sang and trilled so melodiously 
that Jenny, in happy defeat, acknowledged 
that the woodland warbler had out-carolled 
the "Swedish Nightingale." 

SAMBO ON THE MOCKING-BIRD 

"01 lub ter see 'im hoppin' roun', 

An' lub ter hear 'im sing, 
'Cause he understans' his bizness, 

An* 'e makes de bushes ring. 
You kin hear 'im in de mornin' 

F'r he gits up mighty soon, 
Am' 'e beats de Sunday-meetin' 

In de turnin' ob de chune." 

INDIANS AND BIRD-SONG 

As an example simply, the incident is worth 
telling. It illustrates the fact that the music 
of our winged songsters is the one kind that 
appeals to both untutored and cultured taste 
as no other can. 

At a concert in Topeka, Kan., says Thomas 
Ryan in his "Recollections of an old Musician," 
a party of Indians, a father and his six sons, all 
very large, broad-shouldered men, filed in to 
their seats, with their guide, in whose hands 
they seemed like docile big boys. We played 
several numbers of serious and classic music, 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 287 

but while it evoked cheers from the general 
audience, the red men sat with their ox-like eyes 
fixed on us, betraying not a sign of emotion. 

The fifth number was a violin solo by Mr. 
Schultze, and for an encore he gave a little 
Caprice entitled "The Bird in the Tree." 
The moment the artist began this piece the 
Indians were all alive; their eyes sparkled 
with pleasure, and they nudged each other 
with their elbows; and when he struck into the 
actual strains and snatches of bird-melody, 
the life-like imitation startled them so that 
they stared up at the ceiling and all round the 
hall as if expecting to see a flight of singing 
birds. Not seeing any they looked at the 
violinist, and began to understand that he was 
the magician. Delighted and astonished almost 
beyond belief, they listened to the close, and 
then clapped and jumped up and down like 
little children. 

They were "children" of nature indeed, and 
the familiar voices of their mother's household 
were the ones that awoke their enthusiasm. 

THE SHADOW OF A BIRD 

Helen Hunt has left in verse her experi- 
ence during a day of pain, when a winged 
comforter helped her — in the transient 
way that only a poet could appreciate and 
describe. 



288 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

"Sudden across my silent room 
A shadow, darker than its gloom 
Swept swift — a shadow slim and small 
Which poised and darted on the wall, 
And vanished quickly as it came. 
A shadow, yet it lit like flame; 
A shadow, yet I heard it sing, 
And heard the rustle of its wing 
Till every pulse with joy was stirred; 
It was the singing of a bird. 
Only a shadow, but it made 
Full summer everywhere it strayed." 

A commentator might use this little passage 
of Christian fancy to illustrate the innocent 
faith of a simple multitude in St. Peter's 
apostolic power. 1 

WAITING FOR THE SONG 

Frank L. Stanton's occasional madrigals 
have contained few finer lines than these in 
his spring melody entitled " Waiting," where 
a lover muses on his absent but soon-expected 
sweetheart. 

"Would we ever know the robin's tender story 
If there never came a sunny time to sing? 

Let the dew the meadow violets discover! 

Let the robin sing his sweetest, for he knows 

There is never any love without a lover, 

You are coming — and the world blooms like a rose." 

1 Acts 5:15. 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 289 

A WARRIOR'S NUNC DIMITTIS 

The angel that sounded the aged Gari- 
baldi's last march was not one of the trumpet 
band. One of the wildwood train came and 
called him with a flute-note. The hero of 
Italy lay breathing his last at his home on the 
island of Capri. The body of the brave old 
man, scarred with ten gunshot and bayonet 
wounds, was bidding farewell to the patient 
soul, when a little bird lit on the window-sill, 
and trilled a note of love. The dying man 
heard it, and whispered, "Quanto a allegro!" 
(How joyful it is!) and immediately expired. 

VOICES OF AUGUST 

" In the shadow let me sit 
Gathering sounds to entertain 
Drowsy ears and dozing brain 
From thy mazy summer tune, 
Empress of the realm of noon. 



All my soul vacation hails 
In the piping of thy quails, 
And along thy rural chime 
Ring the bells of breathing time. 
Low of kine and bleat of sheep 
Cooing pigeons' song of sleep, 
Swallow's chat and redwing's clink, 
Mewl of cat-bird and chewink, 
Raven's bark and bittern's shout 



290 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Sound my playday welcome out; 
Every hill and hedge and tree 
Sings a song of rest to me." 

T. B. in Youth's Companion. 

A WINTER SINGER 

The eloquent blacksmith preacher, Rev. 
Robert Collyer, in a sermon from the Psalms 
on " Singing New Songs," contended that a 
faith which can find no new song is not worth 
having. He told of a conversation one day 
during a summer visit to the Yosemite, with 
an aged pioneer, when their talk was inter- 
rupted by a bird that swooped down near 
them with shrill cries and screams. The old 
man informed the minister that the bird had 
a nest far up under a crag of the mountain, 
and came down to the water to wet her feathers 
and carry back the fresh drops to cool her 
young ones. Her summer voice was only a 
cry, he said, but in the winter when her 
young had flown away, she was the one sweet 
singer of the valley while all the rest were still. 

"If the cares of life bring only a cry," said 
Dr. Collyer, "solitude may bring a song. 
When our loved ones leave us for a better 
land, let us try to join the 'new song' they 
are beginning to sing." 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 291 

THE POETS' THEMES 

A boy sat watching the orioles, and saying 
he wished he had a book that "told about 
birds." His aunt brought him a large volume 
of "Miscellaneous Poems." 

"Why, poets only write about folks, and 
seasons and things," said the disappointed 
boy. "I want a book that describes birds." 

His aunt turned to Celia Thaxter's "Sand- 
piper." He read it, and it made his eyes 
shine. "Is there anything about bobolinks?" 
he asked, and she turned to Flagg's "O' Lin- 
coln Family," and Bryant's "Robert O' 
Lincoln." 

The youngster began to look happy, and 
she left him with the book in his hands, telling 
him to look through the index. When she 
came back she found him in high spirits over 
his discoveries. He had found Ingoldsby's 
"Jackdaw of Rheims," Percival's apostrophe 
"To the Eagle," Trowbridge's "Pewee," 
Willis' "Belfry Pigeon," Wordsworth's "Cuc- 
koo," Tennyson's "Eagle" and "Dying Swan," 
Catullus' "Elegy on the Sparrow," Long- 
fellow's "Birds of Killingworth " and "Legend 
of the Crossbill," Cromwell's "Stormy Petrel," 
Bryant's "Waterfowl," and three poems to 
the skylark, Shelley's, Wordsworth's, and 
James Hogg's. 



292 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Poets are not always ornithologists, and 
ornithologists are not always poets — though 
John Burroughs has written verse undeniably 
prompted by the classic muse — but it is the 
poets who best know the hearts of the singing 
birds, and have the art that idealizes them. 

AN OLD BARD'S LEGACY 

Walther Vogelweide, known as the prince 
of Minnesingers seven centuries ago, must 
have inherited his family name (Birdmeadow) 
and his passion for the winged songsters from 
ancestors who brothered and sistered with 
the field-larks and coppice nightingales. This 
old Bohemian poet and troubadour, though 
resident at a royal court, had a soul that heard 
in every Maytime the music which perpetuates 
the youth of nature, and could say of a sing- 
ing bird, 

"I know not if magic is it; 
When his joys the world revisit 
There is no one old." 

His emperor, Frederic II (director of the 
Fifth Crusade, and himself an accomplished 
poet), presented him with an estate near 
Wurtzburg (Bavaria), and when he died he 
left a bequest of love and gratitude in his 
legacy to the birds. It directed that four 
hollows should be carved in the cornices of 
his tombstone, and provided for a continual 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 293 

supply of grain to be kept in them for the 
winged visitors that gathered to his place of 
rest. Longfellow has versified the sentiment 
and the gift of the amiable testator. 

— "From these wandering minstrels 
I have learned the art of song; 
Let me now repay the lessons 
They have taught so well and long." 

And the birds of Wurtzburg and all Lower 
Franconia were not slow to welcome the dona- 
tion, but for years, and centuries of years, 
flew in swarms to the poet's tomb to celebrate 
his memory in thanksgiving feasts. 

"Day by day o'er tower and turret, 
In foul weather and in fair, 
Day by day in vaster numbers 
Flocked the poets of the air." 

MORNING JOY 

"I heard you, little bird, 
Shouting a-swing above the broken wall. 
Shout louder yet. No song can tell it all. 
Sing to my soul in the deep, still wood; 
'Tis wonderful beyond the wildest word; 
Fd tell it, too, if I could. 
Oft when the white still dawn 
Lifted the skies, and pushed the hills apart, 
I've felt it like a glory in my heart 
(The world's mysterious stir), 
But had no throat like yours, my bird, 
Nor such a listener." 

Edwin J. Markham. 



294 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

A SABBATH-BREAKING (?) STARLING 

"The Sabbath was made for man." The 
joy of a bird knows no difference of days; 
and only man has ever put an embargo on 
the sinless gaiety of its song. 

Mr. James Wotherspoon in "Kirk Life and 
Kirk Folk" gives his readers a glimpse of a 
"Sabba' Day " Scotch breakfast at the house 
of Andrew Tosh, a farmer. The room indi- 
cated substantial comfort in the circumstances 
of the family (says the writer); the table was 
plentifully supplied, and the arrangement 
and service showed the care and taste of the 
good wife, while a pet starling that hung in a 
cage bore witness to home sentiment of the 
finer feminine kind. Sunday morning Farmer 
Tosh came to the table clean-shaved (the night 
before), and with his Sunday clothes on. He 
said a long and very comprehensive "grace," 
and the conversation at the meal was in a 
vein of corresponding solemnity. But Jock 
the starling (which had been taught by the 
ploughmen to whistle jolly tunes) broke in 
upon the seriousness of the hour with certain 
peeps and hoppings that usually meant the 
coming of a song. Farmer Tosh turned to 
the bird with a frown and a growl that inter- 
rupted its preparations for a minute while 
the conversation went on. But the merry 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 295 

bird soon got over the rebuke, and suddenly 
sang out the opening strain of "Cauld Kale 
in Aberdeen." Silence followed. 

"And Custocks in Strathbogie," whistled 
the starling, — and Mrs. Tosh could hardly 
keep her face straight, while her husband 
glowered at her, and then resumed his porridge. 

"Cauld Kale in Aberdeen, and Custocks in 
Strathbogie," piped the bird again, and Mrs. 
Tosh rose from the table, ostensibly to brush 
up some crumbs. 

"Cover that burd, will ye," said Tosh. 

"Whit's wrang wi' the bird?" answered the 
wife. 

"John!" Tosh called to his son, "Cover that 
burd!" 

John obeyed, and covered Jock with a 
brown towel. 

"We canna pit up wi' that nonsense on the 
Sawbbath Day," said the father. 

Irresistibly the incident recalls a jovial 
academy schoolmate, a general favorite for 
his genial spirit, but never profane or at all 
given to jests that could wound a religious 
fellow-student. His weakness was the notion 
(which was a jest on himself) that he could 
sing, and play the violin, and he never took 
umbrage at the pointed pleasantries of his 
mates over his performances. He knew but 



296 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

one tune, and that was "One-eyed Riley"; 
and it was sport to the boys to hear his voice 
and strings rasping through its rollicking 
staves at off hours in his room. That Sunday 
was a sacred day he never thought to question, 
and he tried to suit his music to its character 
by singing and fiddling the Doxology — to 
"One-eyed Riley!" Apparently no sense of 
the crazy incongruity of "Be Thou, O God, 
exalted high" set to a comic score ever entered 
his mind; least of all any irreverent intention. 
Brown thrasher, cat-bird, wren, song-sparrow, 
whippoorwill, bobolink — every uneducated 
bird can make better music than "One-eyed 
Riley"; but he praises God with the only tune 
he knows. 

THE LAYS OF PARADISE 

"O sinless songsters! they are dead 
Who followed where ye lead, 
And listened at the fountain-head 
Of melody indeed. 

Your lays are language seer and bard 
Translate to men no more, 
The only music left unmarred 
At shut of Eden's door. 

"I can but hope in endless spring 
When I to Heaven repair, 
The souls of birds on earth that sing 
Will join the anthems there, 
And I my gentle friends shall know 



OUR WINGED SONGSTERS 297 

In every fadeless tree, 

And thank the Heart whose overflow 

Of Love they bro't to me." 

T. B. in Harper's Bazar. 

GOD'S OWN CHORISTERS 
Nothing from dear old Izaak Walton tires 
us, and it will not make a too prosy chapter- 
end to quote a paragraph of his affectionate 
and devout words. 

"How do the blackbird and throstle with 
their melodious voices bid welcome to the 
cheerful spring, and in their fixed abodes 
warble forth such ditties as no art of instru- 
ment can reach to! Nay, the smaller birds 
also do their like in their particular seasons, 
as, namely, the laverock, the tit-lark, and the 
little linnet and honest robin that love man- 
kind both living and dead. But the nightin- 
gale, another of my airy creatures, breathes 
such sweet loud music out of her little instru- 
mental throat that it might make mankind to 
think that miracles have not ceased. He that 
at midnight, when the very laborer sleeps 
securely, should hear, as I have very often, 
the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural 
rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling 
of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, 
and say, 'Lord, what music hast thou prepared 
for Thy saints in Heaven when Thou affordest 
bad men such music on earth!'" 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 

"Teach us the strength that cannot seek 
By deed or thought to hurt the weak. 

Kipling. 

BOTH writer and reader feel their heart- 
strings tighten and their nerves shrink 
at this cruel chapter. But without witnesses 
no offender can be convicted, and punishment 
for crime follows the weight of evidence. 
Much has been done to check the massacre 
of beautiful birds, but the much is far too 
little. So long as commerce thrives on the 
barbarian passion for feather-ornament in 
feminine attire, inhuman plume-hunters will 
be found ready to murder scarlet or snowy 
victims for eight hundred dollars a day. 

Job, in denouncing the amazing immunity 
of fashionable wrong-doing, could call the 
feathered creation as witnesses even in his day. 
"The tents of robbers prosper, and they that 
provoke God are secure. They carry their 
god in their hand. Ask . . . the fowls of 
the air, and they shall tell thee." 

Yet, as the Indianapolis News puts it, "a 
live bird is worth more to the agriculturist 
than a dead one to a woman's hat" — worth 
more indeed to human safety, education, 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 299 

inspiration, example, and the sweetness of 
civilized life! and it is a heartless insensibility 
to this fact that has devastated many once- 
familiar haunts of the oriole, the redwing, and 
the goldfinch, till not a survivor is left there. 
The wicked story of pathetic desolation 
wrought by the heron-killers and exterminators 
moves every right-minded person to indignant 
sorrow, and almost makes one 

" Mourn till pity's self be dead." 



POOR LITTLE QUEEN OF BIRDLAND 

The sentiment of a man who saw a singing 
bird wantonly shot hardly covers too wide a 
range in these tender lines. 

"Poor little queen of Birdland 
Slain in the midst of a song! 
A choral of quavers and trills, 
An anthem of blossoms and trees, 
The murmur of passionate rills, 
The music of infinite seas, 
The love of the sun and the moon, 
The peace of the star and the night, 
Tone-flutters that swell to the noon, 
Song-waves whose fingers are white, 
Dream-bugles when twilight is red, 
Joy-carols of summer far-heard — 
All these lying dead, lying dead, 
In the broken-heart of a bird!" 

Charles Howard in The Animal Kingdom. 



300 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

A BOY'S TARGET 

Before calling attention to offenders who 
have only immature moral discretion, we may- 
point to two that have none, to wit, our do- 
mestic cats and dogs. In a time when the 
plague of tree and plant destroyers seems rather 
to be increasing than diminishing, we feel (or 
ought to feel) a pang every time we see the 
house-cat with a young, and sometimes an 
older, insect-eating bird in her mouth; and a 
writer in Forest and Stream doubts if cats 
kill a "hundredth part as many useful birds 
as do the dogs." l A farmer's dog with the 
hunting instinct will often spend hours roam- 
ing by himself, or with an associate, and snap 
up every ground nest or thicket nest of fledg- 
lings he finds, to say nothing of the parent 
birds that do not happen to escape his jaws. 
The writer's timely advice is: "Watch your 
dogs and cats (or confine them) during May 
and June, and till the middle of July." 

And now, as to the "boys' target," it would 
seem possible for both parents and teachers 
to train a boy, and shape his embryo hunter 
instinct, by cultivating his intelligence, and 
his interest in animal history, so that he would 
learn to love mercy rather than sacrifice, and 
understand the difference between reckless 

1 See dog " Pilot" in anecdote, "An Injured Bird-Mother." 




PURPLE FINCH. 
(Upper figure, Male; Lower figure, Female.) 



Order — Passeres. 
Genus — Carpodacus. 



ramily — Fringillid^e. 
Species — Purpurea. 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 301 

and necessary taking of life. Every boy is 
proud to exploit his marksmanship, and igno- 
rance is responsible for much of his indiscrimi- 
nate bird-killing. In a Chicago paper an 
observer notes a rueful but too common in- 
stance of suffering and death. 

A pair of orioles, busy with their work of love, 
in preparation for their homelife and family in 
one of the fine trees of Evanston's public park, 
were flying up and down, gathering materials 
for the cradle of their future brood, when a boy 
broke a leg of the female with a sling-shot. 

After a momentary flutter of surprise and 
pain the wounded creature obeyed her strong 
domestic instinct, and flew into the tree with 
the small tuft of grass and string that she had 
in her bill. Again and again, with short inter- 
vals of rest, she descended to her task of 
affection, and, with one leg hanging useless, 
traveled back and forth, carrying her patient 
contributions. Her mate, though but half 
understanding the situation, did what he could 
to help her, and even sang snatches of song 
as if to give her courage. But the little body 
that held the mother heart grew weaker and 
wearier, and presently fell panting to the 
ground, unable to rise. In pity for the suffer- 
ing bird lying helpless, with the last tiny tuft 
of fibers in her beak, a grieved bystander ended 
her pain by the shortest way. 



302 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Earlier in the same year (1910) the Daily 
Sentinel of Fairmount, Minn., reported an 
even more pathetic case. A small boy with 
an air-gun fatally wounded a mother dove. 
The shot had pierced her breast, but with her 
dying strength she managed to flutter home- 
wards, and reach her nest where a half-grown 
fledgling awaited her coming. Snuggled up 
to her little one, her life-blood pulsing out 
over the helpless baby, she breathed her last. 
When found, some time after, the mother-bird 
and her starved child were frozen together in 
her blood. The two lay with their heads 
pressed together as if in a last embrace. 

The owner of the dove-house brought them 
to the city just as they rested in their nest, 
and the sight, and the suffering of which 
it spoke, were enough to melt the hardest 
heart. 

THE HERODS OF BIRD-SLAUGHTER 

Whatever we may think of the juvenile 
avicide, there is no question in the case of the 
adult butcher of birds, and the character of 
his deed. It is this war of men (and women) 
against not only the innocent victims but the 
victims' families, that makes the enormity of 
the plume-hunters' crime, and it is the feminine 
pagan passion to wear the egret's crest and the 
pelican's and red-bird's robe that originated 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 303 

the cruel commerce which is sacrificing four 
or five lives for every stolen scalp, and robbing 
God's world of one of His most exquisite 
bequests of beauty. Wealthy vanity makes 
possible the reckless avarice that will destroy 
at a shot both the parent bird and its nestlings, 
for it is only at breeding time that the coveted 
feathers are found in perfection. Traffic so 
initiated and maintained calls for a trans- 
position in the Decalogue. "Thou shalt not 
covet" stands before "Thou shalt not kill." 
But it is strange and humiliating that law 
should be necessary to force women — the 
"gentler sex" — to respect motherhood! To 
know that the daintiest glory of a stylish hat 
is the funeral plume of a slaughtered mother 
and her starved babies — is not that enough? 
Herod and Pharaoh massacred little chil- 
dren, but nothing has ever told us that they 
did it by slow torture. The professional 
butchers who are willing for hire to destroy a 
beautiful mother when they know that her 
young are helpless, and without her will die 
a lingering death, might carry the discredit 
of such atrocity alone; but they are emis- 
saries of the wholesale millinery trade. One 
wonders what idea of private thrift or public 
economy this trade can have when it cuts 
down the present harvest, and at the same time 
exterminates the next. But avarice makes 



304 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

the motive, and avarice leaves nothing for 
seed. Its agents go on repeating the short- 
sighted idiocy of the fool in the old fable — 
killing "the goose that laid the golden eggs." 
The woods and lakes are visions of glad life 
before them. Only silence and desolation are 
behind them. The invaders have made sure 
of that. No white-robed Rachel is heard 
there weeping for her brood. She is dead — 
and her skin is on sale in a New York store. 
Having depopulated the brilliant aviaries 
of the Southland, the robbers went far West 
for their plunder. In the nineties they 
found the snowy heron in multitudes at the 
feeding-grounds of the pelicans, the terns, 
the cormorants, and grebes of Malheur Lake 
in Oregon. If their search was ruthless, their 
method was devilish in its cool cruelty. Loca- 
ting the heron colony the hunters placed them- 
selves within shooting distance, each one behind 
his " blind." Everywhere throughout the whole 
area of the romantic settlement, on or near 
one of the hundreds of curious conical nests, 
stood or sat a white mother-bird. At the first 
crack of a rifle a tall fluttering victim tumbled 
to the ground, and the alarm startled a multi- 
tude to flight, till the air was full of spotless 
wings. Unceasingly shot followed shot, but 
though scores dropped dead or dying, the 
great flock would not scatter, for maternal 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 305 

love kept them near their homes, where their 
downy young lay, so that they were an easy 
prey within the ring of destruction. By two 
o'clock the cowardly massacre ended for the 
day, because time was wanted for the butchers 
to strip the plumes from the piles of dead, and 
prepare to pack them in hampers. A slash 
of the knife across the back, a cut down each 
side, and a swift jerk — it was rapid work 
but the amount of booty was enormous, and 
cupidity must hasten and get ready to double 
its gains tomorrow. 

Long after dark could be heard the quacking 
clatter of young herons, crying to be fed. In 
a day and a half the plunderers collected and 
boxed a freight of plumes that yielded twelve 
hundred dollars. 

FINLEY'S GHASTLY STORY 

Mr. William Finley, a naturalist traveling 
with his camera, tells in the Atlantic Monthly 
what he saw there in 1905. Where thousands 
of these stately birds, congregations of desert 
beauties in dazzling white, had winged over 
the lake and rested on its shores, he discovered 
but two; and they were solitaires. "I am 
satisfied," he says, "that not a single pair is 
left." He explored the region around Tule 
Lake, and Clear Lake, and along Lost River, 
anxious to find and picture a specimen of the 



306 THE BIRDS OF COD 

white heron (candidissima). An old French 
Canadian trapper warned him. 

"Yo* nevaire get dose white crane 'less 
right away. Ah've seen t'ousands dose long 
whites. Dey all gone." 

It was true. Mr. Finley returned from the 
breeding camps where only a few days before 
fair colonies of feathered life had swarmed and 
found covert, but he brought nothing away but 
the sight and memory of carnage and death. 
The thugs had forestalled him with their work 
of blood. A cowboy told him he had heard 
"pop-poppin' like a Chiny New Year carouse. " 

"I saw," says Finley, "three piles of wings, 
each of which would have filled a washtub. 
There were bodies of dead grebes tossed aside 
after the plumage had been stripped from their 
breasts. . . . Out through the tules (bulrushes) 
where we had expected to find birds thick in 
their floating homes, there were only deserted 
nests. I picked up dead grebe chicks that had 
climbed out in search of food that dead parents 
could never bring. I saw other homes where 
young grebes were starving, and burning to 
death in the sun. Gray chicks were piping 
vainly for food. I saw a grebe mother that 
had been shot but not found by the plume- 
hunters — a mother lying dead beside her 
home. In a small bunch of tules I saw a 
peeping grebe baby trying to crawl under its 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 307 

dead and mangled mother's wing. I can hear 
him yet." 

No wonder the narrator says of the whole sad 
scene: "I turned back, sickened at the sight." 

WHAT IT COSTS TO PUNISH THESE 
MURDERS 

The Government policy, especially in recent 
years, of setting apart wild districts rich in 
scenery and natural wonders as public domain, 
for parks of pleasure or reservations intended 
to protect animal and vegetable life as well 
as mineral wealth, creates the necessity for 
official guardians. Their duty is to keep out 
private invasion, and suppress predatory 
incursions by law. Lake Malheur is in reser- 
vation territory, and the Klamath region like- 
wise, and the tribes of beautifully feathered 
birds not already destroyed by the hunters' 
guns find comparative refuge there. It is 
sadly true that only an armed military troop 
could adequately guard these forbidden bound- 
aries, but the men selected as "forest-rangers" 
are doing what they can single-handed. How 
one of these fearless men arrested a bird- 
killer at the risk of his life is a story of adven- 
ture in the Youth's Companion of Feb. 5, 191 1, 
contributed by John Gerald Sanborn. The 
scene (in Southern Oregon) is by the shores 
of a lake walled in by volcanic crags, and 



308 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

dotted here and there by small rocky islets 
where the persecuted birds had flocked and 
built their homes. A human intruder (in- 
human we should say) had found this appar- 
ently secure retreat, but watchful eyes had 
discovered the ghastly signs of his visit. It 
was breeding-time — the birds' most defenceless 
season, and the ashes of the poacher's camp- 
fires, and hundreds of stripped dead bodies 
of egrets, pelicans, and grebes lay near them 
to testify what he was doing. 

"One day, says Mr. Sanborn, "I sighted his 
smoke across the lake, and rode round to inter- 
view him. He was skinning grebes ... as 
I dismounted and approached quietly through 
the tall tules. His horse heard me first, and 
started; and with that the hunter jumped to 
his feet and put his hand on his pistol, but I 
hailed him pleasantly. 

" Hello, friend, am I on your hunting-ground ? 
Didn't know anybody had pre-empted this 
lake." 

He stared hard at me — a man about thirty, 
keen-eyed, wiry, and well armed with revolver 
and knife. 

"Are you a hunter?" he asked sullenly as 
I came up, and offered to shake hands. 

A long dialogue followed, during which 
Sanborn passed as a hunter, and the poacher, 
thrown off his guard, went on with his work. 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 309 

The lonesomeness of the place, suggestions of 
partnership, the latest prices realized in the 
East out of the "big money" in the bird-killing 
business, the best-selling plumes, and the 
safest way to get them to New York, and 
finally the possible risks of the collectors — 
all these matters were discussed, Sanborn all 
the while fencing for an opening. The dangers 
of the business gave him his cue. 

"Isn't this a reservation?" I suddenly 
asked. "Do those ranger chaps ever come 
round here?" 

"Not often. There's only one, anyhow." 

"Will he trouble us?" 

The fellow laughed. "He'll never trouble 
me but once," he said. 

No good could come of further talk. " There's 
one thing against our being partners," I said 
slowly. "I am the ranger here, and you are 
my prisoner I" 

He jumped to his feet, and grabbed for his 
pistol, but I had him covered. "None of 
that!" I shouted. "Hands up! quick! Higher! 
Now turn round!" 

Coming up behind him, I took the revolver 
and knife from his belt. ... I had put a pair 
of handcuffs in my pocket that morning, and 
now attempted to snap them on as he stood 
with his back to me, but the instant he felt 
the handcuff close around his right wrist he 



310 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

whirled and clinched with me. We stumbled 
back over his hamper, and nearly fell into the 
embers of the fire. I threw my own pistol 
away to have both hands free, and we went over 
the wet sand of the shore there, first at the edge 
of the water, and then back into the tules. 

It was life or death for me. The fellow 
struck, gouged, and fought with a murderous 
fury that I never saw equaled. I found, too, 
that he was left-handed, and that bothered 
me. All the while he was trying to work 
round to those revolvers or to the knife that 
lay on the ground. He was nearly a match 
for me at first, but he got out of breath sooner 
than I did. ... I held fast to him, and watched 
my chance while he jumped, lunged, struck, 
and cursed, first struggling hard to get at a 
weapon and then swinging the handcuff on 
his wrist in an effort to hit my head with it, 
but the links were too short. Twice he re- 
newed his violent struggles, and then collapsed, 
panting heavily. 

I mastered him now, got my knee on his 
chest, and after a fresh tussle snapped on the 
other cuff. 

"Lie there, and lie still," I said, and getting 
up, I secured the knife and my pistol. His 
own lay about ten feet away and as I went to 
get it he whirled over on the ground twice and 
tried to grab it, but I kicked it out of his reach. 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 311 

His horse, frightened by the violent scuffle, 
had run off, but hearing mine whinny, he 
wheeled and came back. I called to mine, 
and she came, the other following her. 

"Get up and mount your horse," I said. 

He refused, and defied me with an outburst 
of imprecations. 

"Very well," I said. "In that case I shall 
have to tie you up tight, and leave you lying 
here with the mosquitoes"; and taking the 
riata from my saddle, I proceeded to make my 
words good. With that he gave in and got 
on his horse. I looped the line about his 
ankles under the pony's belly and laced him 
to his saddle so securely that there was no 
chance of his slipping off and making me 
further trouble. Then we took the trail out to 
Ringold — thirty-two miles. There I handed 
my prisoner over to justice, in the person 
of the local sheriff and justice of the peace." 

The ranger had done his duty — risking his 
life to do it — but the result was a poor reward 
for his fidelity, and a poor encouragement to 
humane efforts to stop a cruel trade. Though 
the fellow was an old offender under both the 
Oregon and California laws, and a known 
desperado who had before escaped arrest by 
armed resistance, he was merely fined ten 
dollars and costs, and turned loose to sneak 
back to his old business. 



312 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Unless a more determined public opinion 
compels sterner penalties for this plunder of 
winged life, and larger guardianship of its 
peace, the last remnant of this beauty of the 
wild will be shot out of its hiding-places. 
Nothing can restore the birds. In the field 
of creative culture there is no Luther Burbank 
who can produce another giant penguin, or 
pink flamingo, or passenger pigeon. 

THE LOST ECTOPISTES MIGRATORIUS 

Apparently all that is left of the tribe of 
passenger pigeons in the country — or in the 
world — is its popular and scientific name 
and its picture or stuffed skin in the natural 
history museums and ornithological collec- 
tions. Forty years ago this graceful blue- 
gray bird with the ruddy breast was one of 
the living wonders of America for its incom- 
parable numbers. Flocks darkened the sky 
with their millions in every nomadic progress, 
and crowded forests with their feeding multi- 
tudes till the branches broke beneath their 
weight. In 1879 their vast hordes began to 
diminish, till disappointed expectation counted 
only a few scattered coveys, and finally not 
a single straggler. The passenger pigeon is 
a lost bird. And the vanished generations 
of this pretty and prolific creature owe their 
extinction to the death-dealing gun, for every 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 313 

nesting pair swept away by rifle or fowling- 
piece destroyed a chance of a second brood. 

"Inhumanity" got its etymology from no 
dumb creature. If the disease of sentimental 
atrophy — of total unfeelingness — ever affects 
the lower natures it must come from human 
contagion. 

"Inhumanity- 
Is caught from man, from smiling man," 

and Dr. Young could have said that in the 
daytime, as well as in his "Night Thoughts." 

If it is pleaded that much of the account in 
the extermination of a splendid bird race is 
chargeable to food necessity — as it would 
have been in case the last quail in the world 
had been killed by the Israelites in Arabia — 
it only illustrates the criminal recklessness of 
man. Of all beings he is the foremost waster 
of providential plenty; the royal spenthrift 
of the free gifts of God. "Let us eat and 
drink, for tomorrow we die." "After us the 
Deluge." 

So the same unreckoning rage that deci- 
mated the magnificent bison herds is at work 
persecuting the finest feathered tribes to death. 
Cowper's indignant line cries as loudly as if 
he had written it this morning, 

"Detested sport 
That owes its pleasure to another's pain!" 



314 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

For the discovery and authoritative report 
of a living passenger pigeon, or its nesting, 
individuals in thirteen states have offered 
prizes, some from two hundred dollars to one 
thousand dollars each, and the American 
Ornithological Union not long ago interested 
itself in organizing the search for possible 
survivors. A distinguished English natural- 
ist has co-operated in inquiries for the regretted 
absentee, But the hope of success is a forlorn 
one. Drastic inquest by correspondence, etc., 
has brought us nothing nearer than an occa- 
sional " mourning dove" (a smaller bird) mis- 
taken for the lost favorite by some unscientific 
enthusiast. 

A CONVERTED BIRD-KILLER 

Mr. James Lane Allen evidently reports 
the victory of his own better nature in child- 
hood under the name and character of Adam 
Moss, in his story of the red-bird. 

"It was a morning in boyhood on my 
father's farm. I, a little Saul of Tarsus among 
the birds, was on my way to the hedgerows 
and woods, as to Damascus, ' breathing out 
threatenings and slaughter.' Then suddenly 
the childish miracle which, no doubt, had been 
preparing silently within my nature, wrought 
itself out; for from the distant forest trees, 
from the old orchard, from every thicket and 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 315 

fence, from the wide green meadows, and down 
out of the blue sky itself, a vast chorus of 
innocent creatures sang to my newly opened 
ears the same words: 'Why persecutest thou 
me? 5 . . . Through all the years since then 
I have craved no greater glory than to be 
accounted the chief of their apostles." 

The beautifully told story expands into 
poetry the homely five-word confession of the 
boy in the bobolink anecdote on a former 
page: "He sung so I couldn't — " 

RESPONSIBILITY AND REMEDY 

Unless it becomes a worship there is no 
sin in embellished dress, but the line to be 
drawn in supplying it is being better under- 
stood, and we know now that the license does 
not cover mother-murder and orphan-making. 
It stops at wanton bloodshed, and the ruthless 
robbery of nature and natural history. The 
story of the slaughtered egret, as well as of 
the butchered seal and Astrachan lamb, have 
touched the public heart, and aroused the 
public conscience. Few cannot see how need- 
less is, and has been, the violence committed 
in pursuit of even feathered ornament when 
the ostrich plume, farmed by careful culture, 
continually lends its graceful tuft or "willow" 
to the rich patronesses of the milliner's trade 
without injury to its native wearer. 



316 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

Fashion was insatiable when it demanded 
the nuptial love-knot of a prouder and prettier 
head or the flowing veil of one and another 
fairer bird at her maternal coronation. What 
an innovation on domestic rights — to say- 
nothing of its brutality! James Jeffrey Roche, 
who confessed that he had "smelled the 
slaughter-pen and 'sung the soldiers' glory,'" 
but never would do it again, hurls a shaft of 
verse at human cruelty: and there are more 
now than ever who indorse his wrathful words. 

"The bird is slaughtered for fashion, 
And the beast is killed for sport, 
And never the word * compassion' 
Is whispered at Moloch's court. 

" A season of rest comes never 
For the rarest sport of all. 
Will His patience endure forever 
Who noteth the sparrow's fall? 



" We may swing the censer to cover 
The odor of blood in vain; 
God asks us over and over, 
* Where is thy brother, Cain?'" 

The sardonic old witticism that "The only 
good Indian is a dead Indian" can be parodied 
with saner significance to read, "The only 
good bird is a live bird." Dead men are not 
used for food, neither do live birds tomahawk 
children and scalp fathers and mothers. 



OUR WINGED MARTYRS 317 

Killing a brilliant song-bird, or one of the kings 
or queens of plumage for the sake of its dress, 
is powder-and-shot blasphemy. 

A counter-enterprise — to swell the bird- 
population instead of decreasing it — is the 
care of sea-gulls by the National Association 
of Audubon Societies, which has more than a 
dozen islands on the Maine coast utilized for 
their breeding-grounds, and owns in Massa- 
chusetts a bird-preserve or refuge at Woods 
Hole, and another of a thousand acres near 
Cape Ann. At the former place two thousand 
seven hundred young terns were reared in 1909. 

The movement, now international, to sup- 
press traffic in the spoils of martyrdom is less 
an appeal to sentiment than to law. But the 
appeal to moral sentiment has fewer self- 
interested foes to fight face to face. Like 
moral suasion in temperance efforts, it begins 
at the conscience, and reaches the commercial 
end by slow but sure conviction. The success 
of co-operation — like that reported by the 
W. C. T. U. at Baltimore in 1910, when two 
thousand women were counted as pledged 
against the wearing of slaughtered birds or 
their plumage — depends on the condition 
stated in the old farmer's subjunctive when 
pleaded with not to raise tobacco: "If you'll 
convince me that it ain't profitable I'll stop." 
How soon the venders and importers of mar- 



318 THE BIRDS OF GOD 

tyred birds' feathers will "stop" is for "the 
gentler sex" to say. Of the wealthy ladies 
who could withhold their patronage, probably 
not one would fail to rebuke her young brother 
or son who brought in a dead robin or dove as 
a trophy of his stone artillery or his Flobert 
rifle; only let her remember that her words 
would fall flat if the boy could point to her 
bonnet in self-defence. 

Women created the market for birds' lives. 
They can abolish it if they will; and the 
champion of that reform will fulfil Longfellow's 
prophecy in "Santa Filomena": 

"A lady with a Lamp shall stand 
In the great history of the land. 
A noble type of good 
Heroic Womanhood." 



AUG 23 1912 



